On Tuesday, Mohammed Fall, Nigeria’s Humanitarian Coordinator, declared that six million dollars from the Nigeria Humanitarian Fund would be provided to Borno State flood victims.
On September 10, the Alau Dam, which is slightly over ten miles south of Borno State’s capital city of Maiduguri, collapsed, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to leave their homes.
A joint team made up of UN agencies, non-governmental organisations, and the Nigeria Red Cross Society visited Maiduguri over the weekend, according to UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric, who made the announcement during a news conference on Monday in New York that was covered by the Punch.
According to Dujarric, they spoke with affected individuals, many of whom had already experienced multiple displacement due to the region’s turmoil and insecurity.
“We and our partners are providing them with hot meals, we are facilitating air drops of food in hard-to-reach areas cut off by flood waters, and we are also trucking in water.
“We are also providing water and sanitation hygiene services and water purification tablets to stem disease outbreaks.
“This is in addition to supplying hygiene and dignity kits to women and girls, as well as emergency health and shelter services.”
In order to obtain more financing, Dujarric stated that the personnel of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs were also collaborating closely with donors.
More than 125,000 hectares of agriculture in Nigeria have been devastated by flooding, and this occurred right before harvest season, when 32 million people in the nation are severely food insecure.
The head of the World Food Programme office in Maiduguri, Emmanuel Bigenimana, had earlier reported that he had been able to quickly assess the requirements and damage by flying over the city in a UN Humanitarian Air Service chopper that had been sent by the WFP.
“What I have seen is really heartbreaking,” describing homes, infrastructure, roads, schools, hospitals submerged by water.
He also said, “Many, many people – I’m talking about over 200,000 – 300,000 displaced people – are overcrowded in several IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps and also on the streets,” he stated.
According to the World Food Program, when the dam collapsed, river water overflowed 50% of Maiduguri, and local authorities ordered people to evacuate while pleading for relief.
Speaking from the heart of one of the camps for internally displaced people, Bigenimana stated that the World Food Program (WFP) was stepping up its response in coordination with partners and the government, having opened soup kitchens to offer hot meals to those in need.
More aid is required, but the soup kitchens in Teachers’ Village, Asheikh, and Yerwa camps want to feed “50,000 of the worst affected children, women, and men who have lost their homes” with wholesome hot meals.
“This is really an additional burden to already existing crises,” Bigenimana stressed. “This region has been facing conflict for a decade.”
One of the regions most severely impacted by the Boko Haram insurgency was Borno State, which the UN claimed to have some degree of control over earlier this year.
“More recently, we have seen food inflation, food prices have been skyrocketing, really affecting millions of people who are facing food insecurity,” Bigenimana added.
All around the nation, the effects of the extreme weather are being felt quite strongly.
As of September 2024, the World Food Program reported that flooding had affected almost 800,000 people in 29 states in Nigeria and had submerged over 550,000 hectares of farmland.
About 32 million people in the nation were already suffering from severe hunger as of March.
According to the UN food organisation, in order to provide food insecurity relief to people in northeastern Nigeria during the next six months, 147.9 million dollars will be needed. Recovery for Maiduguri’s flood-affected residents “will take long.”
“We need more resources to save lives and to put together efforts to respond to the crises, as well as think of long-term recovery and solutions,” Bigenimana noted.
