President Bola Tinubu on Monday, September 16, 2024, said the Federal Government would create a disaster relief fund to assist Nigerian citizens impacted by floods and other disasters.
The President made the announcement when he visited Borno State to sympathise with the government and people over the flooding in some parts of the state occasioned by the Alau Dam collapse.
He said the fund was expedient as the climate had become more unpredictable and many places in the country were vulnerable to its vagaries.
He said the Federal Government would collaborate with the private sector to establish the fund.
President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, who accompanied the President on the visit, said the National Assembly would collaborate with the Executive to establish the Fund.
Tinubu also visited the Shehu of Borno, Alhaji Abubakar Ibn El-Kanem palace, an Internally Displaced Persons camp at the Government Secondary School in Maiduguri and drove through the areas affected by the disaster.
“After my visit to the Shehu of Borno and the IDP camp, I have been reflecting on how to tackle this kind of disaster and the effects of climate change.
“There must be a disaster relief fund. I will invite the private sector to team up with us and help rebuild the affected areas.
“If we take a small percentage from FAAC and put it as disaster relief fund, which will include all of you, we will be activating and strengthening our sense of belonging,” he said.
The President thanked Gov. Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq of Kwara State; Chairman of Nigeria Governors Forum and Gov. of Bauchi State, Bala Mohammed; Sokoto State Governor, Ahmad Aliyu; and Kogi State governor, Ahmed Ododo, who supported Borno.
President Tinubu commended all the ministries, agencies, and security outfits, particularly the military involved in evacuation of the victims and international organisations working in the state for their efforts.
President Bola Tinubu said the Federal Government would support the government and people of Borno following the floods that have ravaged parts of the state.
“I am here to sympathise with you. I heard the report, my Vice President gave details to me personally. I was going directly to America, but I had to call off the trip to be with you.
“I thank you very much for your leadership and your various prayers. This is one disaster that we must pay attention to, we will help Borno State,” Tinubu told the Shehu of Borno, Alhaji Abubakar Ibn El-Kanemi, when he visited his palace.
He also acknowledged the commitment of Gov. Zulum in tackling the challenges brought by the flood.
“We as a government pledge that we will help you with the rehabilitation of the affected areas and rescue the victims.
“It is our problem not just your problem, we must share in each other’s pains.
“May Allah help us stop the tragedy; the situation that we find ourselves in, the environmental problem and climate change,” the President said.
The Shehu of Borno thanked the President for visiting the state to sympathise with the people over the unfortunate incident.
“We are grateful for your concern and may Almighty Allah reward you. We are grateful to the VP Kashim Shettima, as well as our governor Prof. Umara Zulum.
“My request to you is to find the root cause of this flooding to address it appropriately so as to avoid future occurrence as 80 per cent of the city have been affected by this disaster,” El-Kanemi said.
He said since Maiduguri was established sometime in 1907, it had never witnessed a disaster of such magnitude, even though there was a similar incident in 1994.
Governor Zulum also thanked Tinubu for visiting the state purposely to express his sympathy over the flood disaster that completely disrupted socio-economic activities in the state.
“It has gone beyond the disruption of socio-economic activities, but has claimed the lives of 37 people, with 1 million displaced in Maiduguri.
“I was told you came this morning, and you decided to proceed straight to Maiduguri to commiserate with the people of Maiduguri.
“Your Excellency, this shows your sense of humanity and the degree of fraternity you have with the people of Nigeria. We remain eternally grateful to you,” Zulum said.
Meanwhile, the UN humanitarian Coordinator in Nigeria, Mohammed Fall, has announced $6 million from the Nigeria Humanitarian Fund to support flood victims in Borno.
Alau Dam, located just over 10 miles to the south of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno, collapsed on Sept. 10, forcing hundreds of thousands from their homes.
UN spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, at a news conference on Monday in New York, said a joint mission made up of UN agencies and NGOs, together with the Nigeria Red Cross Society, visited the main city in the region Maiduguri over the weekend.
Dujarric said they met with people who had been impacted – many of them had already been displaced multiple times by conflict and insecurity in the area.
“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.”
Dujarric said the staff of UN Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) were also working closely with donors to secure additional funding.
Across Nigeria, flooding has damaged more than 125,000 hectares of farmland and that was just before the harvests time, and at a time when 32 million people in the country are facing severe food insecurity.
Earlier, Emmanuel Bigenimana, the head of World Food Programme (WFP) office in Maiduguri, said that he managed to fly over the city in a UN humanitarian air service (UNHAS) helicopter dispatched by WFP, to conduct a rapid assessment of damage and needs.
“What I have seen is really heartbreaking,” he said, describing homes, infrastructure, roads, schools, hospitals submerged by water.
“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.”
WFP reported that the dam collapse saw river water overrunning 50 per cent of Maiduguri and state authorities issued evacuation orders to residents in the affected areas, appealing for humanitarian support.
Speaking from the centre of one of the IDP camps, Bigenimana said that WFP had managed to open soup kitchens to provide hot meals to the affected people and was scaling up its response together with the authorities and partners.
The soup kitchens located in three camps – Teachers’ Village, Asheikh and Yerwa – aim to provide nutritious hot meals to “50,000 of the worst affected children, women, and men who have lost their homes,” WFP said, but more assistance is needed.
“This is really an additional burden to already existing crises,” Bigenimana stressed. “This region has been facing conflict for a decade.”
Borno State was one of the areas worst affected by the Boko Haram insurgency which, the UN said earlier this year, has been controlled to some extent.
“More recently, we have seen food inflation, food prices have been skyrocketing, really affecting millions of people who are facing food insecurity,” Bigenimana added.
The impacts of extreme weather are being felt severely across the country.
Some 800,000 people in 29 states in Nigeria have been affected by floods as of September 2024, WFP said, and over 550,000 hectares of cropland have been flooded.
As of March, some 32 million people in the country were already facing acute hunger.
The UN’s food agency said that it needs 147.9 million dollars to support food insecure people in Nigeria’s northeast over the coming six months.
For the flood-affected populations in Maiduguri, “recovery will take long,” Bigenimana said.
“We need more resources to save lives and to put together efforts to respond to the crises – and also think of longer-term recovery and solutions.”
By Salif Atojoko and Cecilia Ologunagba
