LAGOS – The United Nations Wednesday said it had released US$5 million to help flood victims in Nigeria, where the rainy season has killed more than 300 people and caused widespread damage.

The money from its Central Emergency Relief Fund will help “scale up the flood response and address critical needs in three of the most flood-affected states in Nigeria,” the UN said in a statement. They are Borno and Bauchi in the northeast, and Sokoto in the northwest.

The flooding has affected more than 1.2 million people in at least 31 out of Nigeria’s 36 states in the West African country, according to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).
Around 127 500 hectares of farmland has also been affected.

“Floods across Nigeria have created a crisis within a crisis,” said Mohamed Malick Fall, the UN coordinator in Nigeria.
“Millions of people were already facing critical levels of food insecurity before the floods because of economic hardships that have made it exceedingly difficult for the most vulnerable to feed themselves and their families. “The floods have compounded people’s suffering.”
The latest emergency aid is in addition to the US$6 million already released by the Nigerian Humanitarian Fund.
Several Nigerian states hit by flooding have seen rises in cases of cholera.

Last month, a severe flooding disaster killed at least 31 people and forced around 400,000 out of their homes in northeastern city Maiduguri, the Borno state capital.

In 2022, more than 500 people died and 1.4 million were displaced in the country’s worst floods in a decade. 

– Nampa/AFP