Extreme flooding in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri has claimed lives and displaced people from their homes, according to officials.
“The death toll is 30,” National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) spokesman Ezekiel Manzo told journalists a day after water from a spilling over dam swept away homes in the capital city of Borno state, Maiduguri.
“The situation in Maiduguri is quite frightening,” said Manzo’s NEMA colleague Zubaida Umar.
“The flood has taken over around 40 percent of the entire city. People have been forced out of their homes and are scattered everywhere.
“From our statistics, we have 414,000 displaced people,” Umar said. He told the BBC’s Hausa language service that officials feared that number could reach one million.
The Uited Nations refugee agency in Nigeria said on a social media platform that the flooding was the most horrendously awful to hit the city in three decades.
Maiduguri, at the focal point of a more than decade-long jihadist rebellion, fills in as the hub for the responses to the humanitarian crisis in the northeast.
The crisis emanated from a rupture of the Alau dam on the Ngadda River, 20 kilometres south of Maiduguri over the weekend.
As per NEMA, more than 23,000 households, and about 150,000 people, were hit by the ensuing rapid ascent of waters.
“We have also sent our mobile clinics with medical supplies along with medical doctors from the military hospital to attend to the displaced in the camps who need medical care,” said Umar.
“This is important because the main hospital in Maiduguri has also been affected by the flood.
“We have provided canoes and fishermen who have been going into flooded communities and rescuing residents who are trapped,” she added.
“We have deployed our water trucks to provide clean water because we are concerned about the possible outbreak of water-borne diseases.”
“I never pray for even my enemy to experience such a thing,” said one resident, Aisha Aliyu, who had managed to reach one of eight camps NEMA has opened to take in survivors.
Another resident, Maryam Musa, said: “I have nowhere to go,” adding that she had lost track of her relatives.
“I haven’t seen any of them, even my siblings, both young and old, and I can’t reach them on the phone. We are appealing to the governor to help us.”
Borno state Lead Representative Babagana Umara Zulum said in the wake of visiting one of the displacement camps that authorities had opted to give each household 10,000 naira and would be distributing food and non-food aid.
The authorities would need to modify and fortify the dam, he added.
Vice President (VP) Kashim Shettima, who hails from Maiduguri, visited the area.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu offered his “condolences” to those hit by the calamity.
Since the beginning of the rainy season in Africa’s most populous nation, floods have taken the lives of 229 people and compelled more than 380,000 people to flee, as indicated by figures from NEMA’s.
The torrential rains have likewise least 107,600 hectares of farmland were additionally damaged by the heavy rains.
