40% Maiduguri Farmlands Under Siege – Refugee Commission

The National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons has said the devastating flood that ravaged Borno State has seen about 40 per cent of the farmlands in Maiduguri under siege ahead of the harvest season.

“The destruction to crops is likely to increase food insecurity, which has affected over a million people,” the commission’s federal commissioner, Ahmed Tijani, raised the alarm yesterday at a press conference on an update of the commission’s intervention to cushion the effect of the disaster.

The ravaging flood reportedly displaces many people, with some children declared missing and some lives lost. Tijani, who was part of the recent federal government’s inspection delegation to Maiduguri, said infrastructural facilities, including bridges, roads, and houses, have been affected, hampering access to hospitals, schools, markets, and other livelihood activities in the affected States.

He said the commission is embarking on providing food, non-food items, educational materials, WASH, shelter, drugs and medical supplies for emergency needs to assist those adversely impacted by the flooding in line with its mandate.

“The commission will also ensure the provision of mental health and psycho-social support to those traumatised population,” he told reporters in Abuja yesterday, adding, “Equally, the Commission will support the Borno State Government in providing access to the Commission’s recovery shelter at Amarwa Resettlement city.”

He said the commission’s intervention programme differs from the N3 billion the federal government approved for the state to address some of the challenges.

“Given the preceding, the Commission has concluded an immediate palliative arrangement to stabilise the displaced population in Borno State,” the commissioner said.

However, he should have disclosed how much the commission would spend on the intervention programme in Borno.

Meanwhile, the director general of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Zubaida Umar, on Thursday said the current trend of flooding indicated that 29 states and 172 local government areas had been impacted by flooding, affecting 1,048,312 people, displaced 625,239, and led to the death of 259 lives.

“This unfortunate and almost unexpected incident requires a coordinated response, hence the call for this emergency meeting,” she told a stakeholders meeting in Abuja.

She said the situation is manageable for the Nigerian government to cope with. “We, however, encourage partners to continue to carry out their routine assistance to affected people while still monitoring the situation.”

To prevent the recurrence of the unfortunate incident in the future, Tijani said the commission would liaise with relevant stakeholders to organise advocacy on the need to educate households to ensure the clearing of drainage lines to allow for seamless water flow within the Maiduguri metropolis and other communities.