FACT CHECK: This picture shows Fort Gibson dam in US, not Lagdo dam in Cameroon

Recently, a Facebook account — Diaspora Radio International – shared a post with a picture of a dam claiming to be the Lagdo dam in Cameroon.

“Here is the Lagdo dam in Cameroon causing annual flooding in Nigeria,” partly reads the caption of the post 

Furthermore, the message claimed that “in 1977, construction of the Lagdo dam, located in northern Cameroon began and was completed in 1982” adding that the dam in the picture has led to devastating floods in communities in Benue, Adamawa, Taraba, Anambra, Rivers, Bayelsa, Nasarawa, Kogi and other states in Nigeria.

The post which was published on October 20, to the account’s 35,000 followers, had 29 comments and 38 shares.  The account claims to be dedicated to African issues including entertainment, news and documentary.

Brief History of Lagdo dam

The Lagdo dam is a hydroelectric dam situated in the north region of Cameroon – a franco-anglophone African country – which shares borders with Nigeria to the west. 

The dam, which is 40m high, was built between 1977 and 1982, across the river about 50 km upstream of Garoua, in northern Cameroon. The dam has a substantial hydroelectric power potential of about 700MW, with an installed capacity of 84 MW.

As far back as 2012, news reports revealed that water released from Lagdo dam has continued to create floods in Cameroon and in Nigeria with resulting devastation reaching the Niger Delta in Nigeria.

In August 2022, it was reported that the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), the agency responsible for managing disasters and related issues, predicted that 32 out of Nigeria’s 36 states, including the Federal Capital Territory, would experience flooding in 2022.

On September 13, 2022, Cameroon’s historical main electricity company, issued a statement to inform residents of Garoua, that water from Lagdo dam will be released between September and October 2022. The electricity company urged residents to evacuate from the flood-prone areas within the period. 

The Lagdo dam, built in 1982 is a source of potable water and irrigation for grazing fields in and around Garoua, the capital of the northern region of Cameroon.

Whenever excess water is released to protect the dam from overwhelming the surrounding communities, the flood periodically sweeps across the banks of river Benue and Niger, down to the Atlantic Ocean in Bayelsa.

Considering the impact of the Cameroonian dam, a feasibility study was conducted to build a water withholding dam at Dasin Hausa in Adamawa, as succour to Lagdo.

Nigerians have blamed the 2022 flooding and previous ones on the government’s negligence to advance the construction of Danci Hausa dam, forty years after the Lagdo dam was built. 

According to reports by local and international media, surplus water released from the Lagdo dam in Cameroon has contributed to flooding that has led to the loss of life and properties in many parts of Nigeria in 2022. 

In September, Suleiman Adamu, Nigeria’s minister of water resources, told the senate committee on water resources that heavy rainfall, not excess water from Cameroon is responsible for the devastating flood that ravaged states in Nigeria. 

“80 per cent of the floods in this country is water that we are blessed with from God from the sky,” Adamu said.

According to the minister, the Lagdo Dam contributes “only one per cent to the flooding in Nigeria”, adding that “sometimes the water is released without notice”.

Checks by TheCable reveal that several other Facebook accounts shared the same photo with similar captions. But is this a photo of Lagdo dam? 

Fort Gibson dam, not Lagdo dam

TheCable subjected the photo to reverse image search which led to a version of the image on Flickr, taken in March 2009, by photographer Dustin Moore.

Another version of the same photo was found on City-Data.com and gettyimages. On all the platforms, the photo was captioned, Fort Gibson dam and Lake in Oklahoma, US.

Verdict

The circulating photo on Facebook is not of Lagdo dam in Cameroon. A reverse image search clearly shows the photo is of  Fort Gibson dam in the US.

This fact check was produced by TheCable with support from Code for Africa’s PesaCheck, International Fact-Checking Network, and African Fact Checking Alliance network.