The Alau Dam, located about 10 miles south of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, collapsed on Tuesday night, forcing hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.
Emmanuel Bigenimana, the head of World Food Programme‘s office in Maiduguri, said he managed to fly over the city in a UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) helicopter sent by World Food Programmeto quickly assess the damage and needs.
“What I saw is truly heartbreaking,” he said, describing homes, infrastructure, roads, schools and hospitals that were flooded.
Sleeping on the street
“A lot of people – I’m talking about over 200,000 to 300,000 displaced people – are overcrowded in various camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and also on the streets.”
According to the WFP, the dam collapse caused river waters to overflow in 50 percent of Maiduguri. State authorities issued evacuation orders to residents of the affected areas and appealed for humanitarian assistance.
Speaking from the centre of one of the refugee camps, Mr Bigenimana said WFP has managed to open soup kitchens to provide hot meals to affected people and is scaling up its response together with authorities and partners.
The soup kitchens 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 help is needed.
Worsening security crisis and economic problems
“This is really an additional burden on top of the already existing crises,” Mr. Bigenimana of the WFP stressed. “This region has been struggling with conflict for ten years.”
Borno State is one of the areas hardest hit by the Boko Haram insurgency. Earlier this year, the UN reported that the insurgency was, to some extent, under control.
“Lately we have seen food inflation, food prices have gone through the roof“It really impacts millions of people who are food insecure,” Mr Bigenimana added.
The impacts of extreme weather are being felt severely across the country. According to WFP, as of September 2024, some 800,000 people in 29 states in Nigeria have been affected by flooding and more than 550,000 hectares of farmland have been inundated.
As of March this year, some 32 million people in the country were already suffering from acute hunger.
The UN food agency has called for $147.9 million to support food insecure people in northeastern Nigeria over the next six months.
For the flood-affected population in Maiduguri, “the recovery will take a long time,” said Mr Bigenimana.We need more resources to save lives and to join efforts to respond to the crises – and also think about recovery and longer-term solutions.”