Following the devastating floods that displaced over 400,000 people on September 10 ,2024, in Maiduguri and Jere areas of Borno State, a non-governmental organisation ( NGO ) ,SOS Children’s Villages ,has continued to provide life-saving humanitarian assistance and recovery support to the most affected families in Elmiskin ll internally displaced persons ( IDPs ) camp.
The Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) at the Elmiskin II IDPs camp , which is in Old Maiduguri area of Jere local government area are struggling to survive after the devastating flood.
48 year old Ibrahim Hala , an IDP displaced from Marte local government area of the state, who is married with two wives and 15 children, recalled how the flood disaster worsened their situation before the intervention of SOS Children’s Villages came their way.
He said the flood swept away their sources of livelihood, their temporary shelters and made the environment inhabitable, as the latrines in the camp collapsed with faeces littered everywhere.
Hala noted that through the intervention of the NGO, the environment was redeemed back for the safety of the population of the people in the camp who are mostly women and children.
He said with the N400,000 unconditional cash transfers made to some of the households in the camp by the NGO, he was able to engage in buying and selling of grains, with which his family members are feeding from and the children’s academic and health need catered for.
Another beneficiary of the SOS Children’s Villages intervention, Amina Musa Mohammed , who is in the Elmiskin ll IDPs camp with her five children, narrated the difficulty she was facing in feeding and catering for the education of her children , having separated with her husband 11 years before the September 10, 2024 flood disaster.
Amina said some of the men she approached for assistance would rather want to sleep with her, of which she resisted, and embarked on menial jobs or at times resorted to begging to cater for the needs of the children.
She said that was how she has been surviving with the children before the flood disaster, which worsened her condition and that of the children as the little they have in the camp, including the children’s educational materials were swept away by the flood.
” It was after the flood that the SOS Children’s Villages visited our camp to register us and luckily I was part of those that were registered. I got N400,000 and used part of the money to buy sewing machine since I have daughters. I also began poultry farming and goat rearing. I as well farmed beans ,millet, which are the things that are sustaining me and the children presently,” she said.
While appreciating SOS Children’s Villages for the interventions, Amina noted that there are so many women in the camp, saying that in a bid for them to cater for their children, some of them embarked on prostitution, while others lost their husbands to the Boko Haram terrorists, with some killed in the forest searching for firewoods to sell and feed the family.
She appealed to SOS Children’s Villages to extend the same gesture granted to some of them to other women in the camp, while advising those who have benefited from the interventions to make judicious use of the money or items recieved.
Similarly , the chairman of the Elmiskin ll IDPs camp, Usman Ali, recalled how the flood disaster put many of the IDPs in the camp into hardship, adding that the interventions they received from the SOS Children’s Villages, such as training of their youths on various skills; provision of conditional and unconditional cash transfers and agricultural inputs ,changed the lives of the people in the camp.
The humanitarian action manager SOS Children’s Villages, Mr Fredson Ogbeche ,while speaking yesterday after a visit to the Elmiskin ll IDPs camp, said through its integrated humanitarian response, SOS has reached over 18,000 individuals, providing conditional and unconditional cash transfers to more than 3,800 households, agricultural inputs to 100 families, and hygiene awareness to over 11,400 community members.
He said construction of solar-powered boreholes and gender-responsive toilets is nearing completion to improve access to safe water and sanitation.
In addition, Mr Ogbeche said over 2,300 individuals, including women and children, have benefited from protection, GBV awareness, menstrual hygiene support, and psychosocial services, noting that these efforts not only address immediate needs but also strengthen community resilience and child protection in disaster-prone areas.
” SOS Children’s Villages Nigeria remains committed to protecting children, empowering families, and supporting communities to rebuild with dignity and resilience in the face of climate-induced disasters,” he said.
