NIGERIA: Floods displace 80,000 in Kaduna

Photo: IRIN

KADUNA. NORTHERN NIGERIA, 9 September 2003 (IRIN) - At least 80,000 people living in and around the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna have been displaced by flooding following torrential rains on Sunday that forced the Kaduna River to burst its banks. Property worth several hundred dollars was destroyed by the worst floods ever to hit the town, officials said. The most affected districts included Barnawa, Kabala, Nassarawa and Tirkania. There were however no reports of deaths, but 30,000 homesteads were washed away. Kaduna state governor's spokesman Murtala Surajo told the French news agency, AFP, on Monday: "This sort of thing has not happened in the last 20 years. We have to look into what to do to assist the victims. But I must confess we did not anticipate the scale of damage." There were reports of some people spending Sunday night on roof tops and trees to escape the floods. Several plots of farmland along the river bank were also submerged. A major bridge across the river was being watched closely amidst fears that it could collapse. Several armed soldiers from the elite anti-riot police division were deployed to the worst affected areas of the town. Kaduna, in which four million people live, is the political capital of the mainly Muslim northern Nigeria. It has experienced religious riots several times between the Muslims and other believers, since Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999. In November 2002, riots erupted in Kaduna after a newspaper published an article urging Muslims to support the Miss World pageant and speculating that Prophet Mohammed would have wanted to marry one of the contestants. At least 220 people were killed and 22 churches and eight mosques destroyed.