The floods in various parts of the country have left children with the Hobson’s choice of living under conditions that are below human standard. They are traumatised, suffering and scarred, report UJA EMMANUEL, NICHOLAS KALU, BASHIR MOHAMMED and KOLADE ADEYEMI
Little Hope, Patience, Ngozi and Amara had no hand in the fate that has befallen them. Chased away from the comfort of their parents’ home by the Makurdi, Benue State flood, they are now four of the over 200 children whose homes are the three displaced people’s camps. They sleep in classrooms, defecate in make-shift toilets and live at the mercy of the government and donors.
Their residency of the camps means they are not at liberty to eat what they want. They have been unable to go back to their schools, which resumed a few days after the rains overran their homes. Sound sleep has become a luxury, with mosquitoes feeding fat on them in the open camps. Clothes and toiletries are in short supply.
In short, they are traumatised, scarred and unsure of what tomorrow will bring. They are reduced to living every day as it comes.
Most of the children in the camps are between the ages of one to 14. But there is also baby Suswam. He was born at the Wurukum camp. His mother Chiso was delivered of him last week and she named him after the Benue State Governor.
At the time of his birth, the camp was lacking beverages and baby foods. The other camps at St. Catherine and NKST Primary Schools also faced similar challenge.
The Camp commandant in charge of L.G.E.A Primary School Wurukum, Mr. Terumbur Alabar, admitted that the development was a major challenges.
The Camp commandant at St. Catherine, Mrs. Diana Akera, confirmed that they lacked beverages and the assistant camp commandant at N.K.S.T Wadata, Miss Doose Agede, said the situation was the same in her camp.
Hope, Patience, Ngozi and Amara told The Nation that they had missed school. They said life in camp is difficult.
Hope said: “We barely have enough to feed. We now sleep in the classroom, with mosquitoes all over. We can’t play much.”
Abdul Umaru, a 12-year-old, told The Nation that the disaster had truncated his Quranic education. He described life in the camp as difficult.
A nursing mother, Mrs. Ngunengen Ape, lamented the inability of her three children to go to school. Little Miss Wandoo Ugo , five , said she missed school and play. She said she wanted to get back home.
“I hardly find enough sleep. I am missing school. The Federal Government should do something to alleviate our suffering. Life in camp is terrible,” she said.
The camps in Lokoja, Kogi State, are overstretched. The population of children in the Adankolo, Gadumo and Kabbawa camps is put at over 600.
Children expressed sadness at their inability to go to schools.
Seven-year-old Sule Rebecca said her parents lost everything, including her schooling materials, to the floods.
She said: “My parents could no longer afford by books and uniform that got lost in the flood. The little money my mother made in her grinding engine business was washed away by the flood. Even if I still have my uniform and other school materials, my parents have no money to pay for my school fees because water has taken away their properties, including our grinding engine.”
The Science Secondary School student urged the government to get teachers to teach them at their camps.
Madam Jummai Abdulkadir, a mother of four, said feeding the children had been a major challenge. She condemned a situation where a family of five shares one or two cups of rice for a meal.
“Though we know it is the situation that led us to this travail, and government is doing its best to provide for us, but the supply is too small for us. Even the toilet provided is being locked up most times because they accused us of misusing it,” she said.
A widow, Mrs. Ramatu Aminu, told The Nation that a N35 loaf of bread is given to a family for breakfast. She said of her seven children, only five were registered by the camp’s managers. She said all the children have stopped schooling because of the disaster.
At the Adankolo camp, Rabi Yaro and her four children sleep on a tiny mattress she salvaged from the wreckage of her former house.
She said: “I have been homeless for more than two weeks; this is where we are staying now. I took nothing except for this mattress and those three cooking pots.”
At the camps, lunch is usually bread, with nothing to go with it. In a day, a family gets two cups of gari, pure water and bread.
In Agwagwune, Biase, Cross River State, children live under inhuman conditions with no potable water, food and medication. Their parents do not fare better. No thanks to flood, villages in the area can only be accessed by canoes meandering through the forest trees amidst reptiles and dangerous insects.
A resident of Egbism village, Mr. Ekuma Bassey, lamented that the flood was the first of its kind in over 10 years.
He lamented that he and his children had no place to move to as they could not afford to rent a home upland. So, they have been ‘living’ on water.
He said: “Now, we only eat bread, which we have to go to a neighbouring community to get. We cannot use firewood here. We cannot use kerosene. We are suffering. Please help us.”
Children are facing hard times in Okpandin, a village in Yala Local Government Area, which was sacked by flood.
A resident of the area, Cyprian Idim, said: “We have no access to that village again and the people in that village had to be evacuated to other villages. There is no access to that village again. Water has surrounded the village.”
Mrs. Glory Inyang of Umon Island in Biase Local Government Area of Cross River State said her children have had to stop schooling.
She said: “Our children can no longer go to school. We even thank God they are alive.”
For Mr. Bassey Ilem’s children in Agwagwune, Biase, the mode of transportation to school has changed.
He said: “They now have to go to school in a canoe. If the children here tweaked the popular nursery rhyme a bit to sing, ‘Row, row, row your boat gently down the street/Merrily, merrily, merrily life is not a treat’ it would definitely not be out of place. Things are no longer as they used to be and life has grown a lot harder for these people who have been forced to get used to the body of water around them.”
A resident of the area, Mr. Willam Ilem, said: “Primary school has a separate canoe from secondary school. That is the means of transportation.”
In Abayong, a student of the Government Secondary School, David Ana, said: “I can no longer go to school. My school uniforms, school bags, books and sandals were all washed away in the flood.”
In Agwagwune, pupils of St. Augustine Primary School have a makeshift school – the Town Hall. “We are now using town hall as classrooms. The children can study here as the schools have been taken over by water,” a teacher, who pleaded anonymity, said.
Cross River State Commissioner of Education Prof Offiong Offiong said: “We have already taken steps to relocate the children and make necessary arrangements to ensure that academic activities in hose schools are not disrupted. Some of the schools have also been captured under our comprehensive renovation programme and by next month some contractors are going to be mobilised to sight. So, we are on top of the situation.”
The Director-General of the State Emergency Management Authority (SEMA), Mr. Vincent Aquah, said children and their parents are suffering.
He said: “These conditions are far below human standard. Children and women are suffering and there is an urgent need to address the situation before it gets out of hand.”
He appealed to the Federal Government and international organisations to come to the aid of the state government, which, he said, has no financial capacity to effectively manage the situation.
Hajiya Amina Yusuf, a mother of eight who was among the over 15,000 people displaced by the flood which ravaged five villages in Warawa Local Government Area of Kano State, has cried out for help over hunger and lack of adequate shelter for the victims.
According to Hajia Yusuf, for two days, her children and other residents of the camps were neglected. She said there was no food and medication.
She said: “It was only this afternoon that they brought us gari and sugar. I have about eight children with me, what can we do with three cups of gari? This is pathetic and I call on those in authority to do something urgently to alleviate our plight.
“We did not cause the flood. We are victims of natural disaster and that does not mean that we should not be treated as human beings. In everything, we give Allah the glory that all of us survived the flood.”
