- Survivor: My neighbours died because they were too old to run
- Death toll can’t be ascertained until water level recedes – Displaced person
- Traders count losses, cry for help
The respite enjoyed by Borno residents from Boko Haram onslaught was shattered on Tuesday as a catastrophic flood swept through the Maiduguri metropolis, leaving many dead and property worth hundreds of millions destroyed. More than one million people were reckoned to have been displaced by the devastating incident reportedly caused by the collapse of the Alau Dam in the state. INNOCENT DURU reports that the unusal incident will linger in the people’s memory.
When Sadai Usman, a trader in the Maiduguri metropolis, closed his shop at the end of business on Monday, it was in the hope that he would return the next day to continue from where he stopped.
On his way home, he received calls from his business partners who asked him to supply them bags of rice, flour, sugar and other items the next day. An elated Usman assured them that their requests would be granted first thing in the morning.
He was so certain that he would be at his business place the next morning that he left a huge chunk of the money he made for the day in his shop.
As fate decided, however, his plans for the next day were shattered by a disastrous flood that ravaged the metropolis and perished all he had laboured for overnight.
Reliving his ordeal in an interview with our correspondent, Usman, who is now taken refuge in the displaced persons’ camp in Bukassi, said: “The flood affected my shop. I sell flour, sugar and rice, and they were all destroyed.
“There is no need for me to go and see my shop, knowing that sugar, flour and rice are not friends with water.”
Usman estimated that “the items I lost were worth more than N6 million. There were 22 bags of flour, 18 bags of rice and nine and a half bags of sugar. I also had cash in the shop. I don’t know if I will still see it when I go back later.”
But for mother luck, Usman and his household would also have lost their lives in the incident as they were fast asleep when tragedy struck.
Explaining how they escaped, he said: “I was sleeping in my house that fateful night. At one point, a neighbour knocked on my door and asked if I was not aware of what was happening in the area, and I said no.
“He asked me to come out and see what was going on. My family members and I ran out of the house with only the clothes we had on us.
“I didn’t take a pin from the house as we all ran away with the neighbour that came to call our attention to the danger in the neighbourhood.”
Usman continued:
“If you go to our area now, you would see many dead bodies. I counted more than 10 and I knew some of them: Baba Musa, Ba Modu and Ba Isah and Ibrahim Hassan. The flood water killed them. They were old people so they could not run.
“As the water was coming, they said they would watch and see if it would go back. It was while waiting that the water ran over them.”
Contrary to reports that the incident was caused by Alau Dam collapse, Usman said: “The water was not from Nigeria; it was from Cameroon. This is not any kind of water we know in Maiduguri. It is not water from yhe Alau Dam.
“It has affected farmlands. Nobody could take anything from their farmlands.
“If you see the farmlands, they are all covered by flood water.”
It was a mixed feeling of thanksgiving and sadness for Yagumsu, an embattled mother who is now hibernating in the Bukassi IDP camp with her children. She is sad that she lost goods worth hundreds of thousands to the flood but thankful that the incident did not claim their lives.
“I am a businesswoman. I sell garri,” she told our correspondent, looking very groggy with sleep.
“I had some of my wares in the house and some in the shop. The flood destroyed all the goods in the house. The goods I lost to the flood were worth more than N400,000,” she said.
Recalling her experience, the distraught mother said: “Between 11pm and 12am, the water started coming. By 2 am the volume became too high that we ran away.
“When I went there today (Wednesday), I could not find a way to enter my house. The water did not cover my roof but it destroyed everything I had in the house.”
Asked about the situation in the IDP camp, she said: “There are too many mosquitoes in the camp. We are managing with mosquito coils.
“We don’t have a mat or mattress. We just got something to lie down on.”
Dispirited by the conditions in the camp, she expressed hope that normalcy would soon return for them to go back home.
Asked what she will do if she got home and found that her building had been damaged by the flood, she retorted: “When we get home and find out that the building has been damaged, we will leave the place and move to another place.”
With the situation of things, she said, “there is no hope of our children going to school for now. They can’t go anywhere.”
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Another survivor, Liman Mustapha, was also yet to overcome the shock the incident caused him and his family.
His words: “I was sleeping in the house with my family members when trouble began.
“We started seeing the water early in the night after our Maghreb prayer.
“When the water started coming, we blocked the place it was coming from. But by 2 am, the level had risen too high and we had to run to Shehu’s palace.
“We slept there and by morning time, the state government came and brought us to the IDP camp.”
Decrying his ordeal, Liman said: “I only came out wearing the cloth I have on me now and nothing else. I lost everything.
“I only came out with my wife and children and the only clothes we were wearing.
“Before we ran out of the house, the water was yet to get to the zinc level.”
As a man in charge of his own affairs before the incident, Liman is not happy that he is not in his house. He said: “I was living comfortably with my family before the incident. But here in the camp there are too many mosquitoes.
“One of my sons is sick. He has fever. It is not good to live in the camp.
“I don’t have a mattress to sleep on in the camp. Everything was left in the house.
“I am sleeping on the floor. There is not even a mat.
“I went to beg for a mat but I had to give it to my family because it’s too small.
“Mosquitoes are too many in the camp. I couldn’t even sleep yesterday because there was no net.
“I ran out of the house without a dime and could not even afford coil to combat the menace of mosquitoes.
“I couldn’t sleep at all at night because of mosquito bites.”
Exhibiting a high sense of optimism, Liman said: “When I leave the camp, I will be going back to my house. Once the flood recedes, I will go back.
“I am not scared that the flood can come again. If God brings flood, there is nothing we can do.
“We thank the government for the money they have given us to buy food.”
‘The flood rose above my zinc’
Another survivor, Abba Jimo, said the flood “rose above my zinc. I went to my house today but I couldn’t get close to my house.
“The flood water was too much. The environment is a no go area, you can’t ascertain the number of dead people for now.
“Everything we had was covered by water.”
He said he was sleeping in the house when the flood water started rising.
Jimo said: “We ran away before it could cover our house. It was already entering our house before we ran to the Shehu’s palace at 2am.
“The Shehu’s palace was also destroyed by the flood. The government later came and moved us to this IDP camp. We don’t know how soon we will be living.
“The flood water pulled down the walls around my building. My room is still there but the wall surrounding it has been grounded.
“The school where I work, you cannot even see the zinc. I don’t know where I will be staying after this period. We are waiting for the government.
“The governor said he can assist us to rebuild our houses again.
“The governor came and gave N10,000 to each one of us to buy food for our children. He gave the money to about 8,000 of us.
“He said NEMA may come to assist us tomorrow.”
Victims outside IDP camp share experience
Findings showed that not all the survivors were evacuated to the IDP camp. Some of them had fled to neighbouring communities to seek refuge in friends’ and relatives’ houses.
One of them, Umaru Kashim, said: “I have moved to my younger brother’s house. The flood seriously affected me.
“My four-room apartment is broken down. It is only my wife’s room that is standing.
“You can’t even enter the house. We only escaped wearing the clothes we had on us.
“But for God’s intervention, I would not have been able to rescue my children.
“Even the Emir of Bornu was affected. He packed his family in my presence and left.”
Asked if people died in his neighbourhood, Umaru said: “You can’t count the number of people who died.
“A neighour who had a poultry farm lost all his 300 birds. Those rearing rams also suffered the same fate.
“But the concern here is about human lives and not those of animals.
Going down memory lane, he said: “We had a similar incident in 2004 but this one is worse. It is at Alau Dam that they used to control the river.
“For some time now, there had been warning that the river was overflowing and that those who were close to it should vacate the area.
“This had been going on for about a week.”
Also sharing his experience, Ibrahim Mohammed Abubarkar, said: “I am at Baga Road after escaping from the deadly incident. But someone has told me that I will be taken to the IDP camp.
“I lost everything. I didn’t take a single thing out of my house.
“My family members and I ran out of the house to save our lives from the danger that was at our doorstep.
“We were very lucky to have survived. Walahi, we were very lucky.
“Neighbours told me that many people died in the flood, but I am not aware of anyone who died.”
When the flood started, he said, “I saw water entering my bedroom. I quickly alerted my children and told them we should leave the house. They thought that I was joking.
“Before we realised it, the flood was almost covering us.
“By the time we got to the road, there was no place for us to cross to the other side. Everywhere was flooded.
“I carried my child on my shoulder and held others by their hands. I had to, at a point, leave some in the flood water to cross the other ones to a safe place.
“It was other people who helped to rescue and bring the others to a safe place.”
Ibrahim, who works as a teacher and tailor, added that his machine and every other thing he had were left at the mercy of the flood.
“It is soldiers who have been assisting us,” he said.
“We have not been eating well at all. Some people assist us with bread and other small small things.
“As I am talking to you now, hunger is seriously dealing with me.”
Dahiru Adam, a spare parts dealer, said he had more than 65 engines in his shop submerged.
According to him “any engine that is soaked with water is a good as condemned.”
Explaining the cost of the different Honda engines in his shop, he said the lowest of the engines would cost N400,000 while the highest would go for N1.7 million.
“By the time we heard that the Monday market was taken over by water around 3.00pm, some people had started moving out their goods out of their shops. But it was too late as the water just came in no time and took over the entire area,” Dahiru said.
Nomso, another Igbo trader at Bank of the North area, said: “My entire shop and those of many other people were swallowed by water. It was a surprise to us how the water travelled so fast to swallow our shops.
“We were in our houses sleeping when the water took over our entire businesses. We came out the following day only to find that all our shops had been submerged.”
He said their losses were unquantifiable
The loss of more than 30 lives is a tragic reminder of the human cost of the disaster. Families are grieving over loved ones who were unable to escape from the rising waters. For many, the psychological impact of losing family members, homes and sources of livelihood is immeasurable.
The flood waters also brought with it health risks, with concerns rising over potential outbreaks of waterborne diseases such as cholera and typhoid.