The 2023 presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, visited Borno State over the recent flood disaster.
Atiku announced his arrival in Maiduguri in a post via his official X handle on Sunday.
“A short while ago, I arrived in Maiduguri for a sympathy visit to the people of Borno State over the recent catastrophic flooding,” he stated.
Flood waters have displaced more than one million people in and around Maiduguri, which serves as the hub for the responses to the humanitarian crisis in the northeast, in one of the worst ever floods in Africa’s most populous country.
Atiku visited Borno amid the ravaging flood in the state.
Thousands of homes were engulfed by rapidly rising waters after a dam burst following a weekend of torrential rain in northeastern Nigeria.
Barkindo Mohammed, the director general of Borno State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA), told AFP that the number of people displaced by the flooding could reach one million people.
Mohammed Sheriff, 60, was not so lucky. He too awoke in the middle of the night to rising waters in his home.
Together with his two wives, they carried six of their children, thinking that the two eldest, aged 11 and 13, would be strong enough to fight the current. The two children are still missing.
“We haven’t seen them since and we fear the worst,” Sheriff said.
The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said on Wednesday that at least 30 people have died in the floods — the worst in 30 years, according to the United Nations refugee agency in Nigeria.
