by Stanley Azuakola

The national flooding crisis continues to spread, with Delta State becoming the latest to witness the natural disaster.

On Tuesday, heavy floods sacked the headquarters of the Immigration Service on Asaba-Onitsha Express way. It led to the loss of properties worth millions of naira including two heavy generating sets, and a transformer.

The flooding was caused by the overflowing of the River Nigeria. Another consequence of the flood at the headquarters of the Immigration Service was the invasion of snakes in the premises.

Officers of the service were seen moving production equipment and documents, using canoes, while hundreds of people watched.

(PHOTOS: See what the floods have done)

According to the state controller of Nigeria Immigration Services, Ishaku Hamad, the controller-general, had directed that their property be evacuated to a temporary location.  However, the temporary place allocated to them was found to be inhabitable, so the property was being evacuated to his residential home for safe keeping.

According to him, “We do not have to call people to come and see, you have seen it yourself. This is a natural disaster cutting across Nigeria, we are not exception. Our office is almost submerged; we are trying to evacuate whatever we can evacuate to a temporary site. The properties we can lay our hands on we pick out, the ones we are not able to savage we leave it because life is more important than the properties and I cannot risk the lives of my officers. Snakes have taken over the place, even in my own office, there are snakes everywhere. The snakes must have come from the swamps.

“The extent of damage is too bad; you can see that half of the offices are submerged completely,” he said.  “One cannot quantify the damage in terms of Naira and kobo but we have suffered a colossal loss both in material and in equipment.”

Apart from the Immigration Services, other places such as the state owned Broadcasting Service (DBS), Asaba was also affected. The floods swept through various parts of the state including Umeh town, Uzere town, Anwai and Cable Point