The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has confirmed a total of 41 people’s deaths, while 393 others sustained varying degrees of injuries in Borno and Yobe States as a result of severe floods.
Reeling out the statistics of damage caused by the floods in both States to BusinessDay in Maiduguri, Surajo Garba, Acting NEMA’s Zonal Coordinator for the North-East Zone, warned residents of riverine areas in two States to vacate their homes immediately and relocate to safer ground.
He noted that, in Borno State, more that 23,868 households were affected in 12 Local Government Areas, including MMC, Jere, Bama, Biu, Bayo, Abadama and others as flood wreaked havoc on over 2,000 houses and farmlands.
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He attributed the flooding to torrential rainfall, which necessitated the release of water from Alao Dam and Gadabul.
Surajo explained that NEMA officials, in collaboration with the State Emergency Management Agency, Red Cross, NOA, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and other stakeholders, had visited the affected areas, advising residents to evacuate to avoid loss of life in Borno State.
He warned that if the flooding occurred at night, it could result in loss of life and property, urging residents in riverside areas to relocate to higher ground to safeguard lives and property.
He called on community leaders to sensitize residents about the impending flood and urged both residents and relevant authorities to clear debris from water bodies to prevent blockages and the creation of detention dams.
BusinessDay reports that NEMA, IOM, the Borno State Environmental Protection Agency (BOSEPA), and other partners are working to safeguard lives and property and provide necessary sensitization to communities in the affected areas of the State.
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Similarly, Mohammed Goje, Yobe state Emergency Management Agency, noted that the SEMA, NEMA and stakeholders were working to ensure they provide support to the victims, asking the communities to evacuate and prepare emergency shelter in the event of evacuation.
Goje said, “We have a lot of communities presently about 258 communities are affected across all the 17 LGAs. And unfortunately, we recorded 37 death due to building collapse and drowning in water, and about 350 people injured different kind of injuries, but most of them were treated and discharge.
“Of course, we have our challenges a lot of people and they refused to evacuate because of culture because of religious inclination to their land because of land issues and other things so we have over 18,000 households. They are about 95% in temporary shelter places like Primary School, Secondary Schools, and other public structures. We are responding to them in accordance with directives of Governor Mai Mala Buni.
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“So we started with sensitization we did our stakeholder mapping. We map our stakeholder communities. Of course, we keep updating them stakeholders as events unfolding. We do stakeholders engagement. We did sensitization on ask them to go and step down this this sensation and we ensure that our religious leaders in Mosques and churches are also informed so that during Friday and Sunday sermons they step down at the community level. We started identifying our emergency shelters, unfortunately primary school and secondary are closed.
“Sadly, three major highways linking LGAs headquarters has been washed away, many public structures and more 100 hectares of farmland has been affected. We are providing lifesaving items to those who have been affected across all our local government areas. We will continue to prioritize policies that we enhance quick response and support to the victims.”
