Borno after the Flood

In the early hours​ of 10 September last year, Hauwa woke to discover water pooling beneath her bed. She attempted to stem the flow by stuffing bits of cloth in the gap under the door, but it continued to pour in. People outside were shouting, waking up her five young children. Hauwa couldn’t get all of them out of the house together, but some neighbours came to their aid. Two young men picked up three of the children, while she took the hands of the other two. Outside, the water was ankle-deep and rising quickly. As they made their way to higher ground, they saw the flood sweeping through the houses, lifting up cars. The water kept rising until it had washed away all their possessions, leaving debris in its wake. Hauwa and her family sheltered on a bridge a few kilometres away, which soon turned into a makeshift camp. They stayed there for nearly three weeks.

Alau Dam, twenty kilometres to the south of Maiduguri, the capital of the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno, had collapsed that morning after months of torrential rain. Villagers who lived near the dam had told the government that the structure was unsafe and the reservoir behind it too full, but no action was taken. Nearly half a million people were displaced and, though the death toll hasn’t been formally established, it was in the hundreds, possibly as many as a thousand. The poorest communities, living closest to the dam, were worst affected – farmers and fishermen who relied on the Gwange river (outside Maiduguri it’s known as the Ngadda) for their livelihoods. Like most Nigerian cities, Maiduguri has sharp divisions of wealth and status. The wealthy live far from the river, in Government Residential Areas which are quiet and orderly, with well-maintained roads and large gated compounds. Most homes in the GRAs suffered little or no damage from the flood. By contrast, most of the shanty dwellings in poorer areas have collapsed. Similarly, the homes and shops of grocers, hairdressers and mechanics were gutted, while buildings belonging to government institutions and large companies were spared, protected by their distance from the river and by their sturdy construction. But the flood did severely disrupt the city’s transportation system: Fori Bridge and Lagos Bridge, which connected the east and west of the city, were both destroyed.

When I visited Alau Dam, two months after the flood, the road leading to it was blocked by security guards. The men only allowed us to pass when they realised our driver was, like them, a Shuwa Muslim. The area around the dam looked like a demolition site. Piles of debris and mounds of mud rose above the water. On 4 February, the Federal Executive Council, presided over by President Bola Tinubu, approved 80 billion naira for the reconstruction and improvement of the dam to prevent future disasters. A month later, the Minister of Water Resources and Sanitation, Joseph Utsev, signed off the project. He announced that it would be completed within 24 months and executed in two phases. The first phase, scheduled to take place from March to September this year, would involve immediate flood-risk mitigation, while the second phase would focus on extensive desilting of the reservoir and structural improvements to the dam. Two months after the planned start of the project, there was apparently still no sign of work beginning at the site.

In Maiduguri, Hauwa showed me the thick watermark still visible around her house. It was more than six feet above the ground. Her neighbourhood still bore obvious traces of the flood. The street outside her house was covered in stagnant water. ‘It’s a cul-de-sac,’ my guide, Habib, pointed out. ‘There’s nowhere for the water to drain.’ Nearby, a boy in a striped shirt was fishing in the water. Hauwa’s house, a modest structure with two rooms, no longer had a toilet or kitchen – they had been taken by the flood. The family had managed to reclaim some furnishings – a mattress, a few mats – which they had dried out and returned to use.

Hauwa’s neighbours didn’t fare any better. Modu escaped the flood with ‘nothing but the clothes on my back’. He camped near the busy West End roundabout, which was above the flooded area, and went ‘three or four days without eating’. After a month of sleeping rough he returned to his house, aiming to salvage ‘whatever was left behind’. Local people’s attempts at rebuilding are being made with little to no assistance from the government. The floor of Modu’s house was covered in a thick layer of mud. Near the entrance, in what was once the living room, he pointed to a generator he had used to pump water out of the house. In the corner of another room, blocks of concrete and a hole were all that remained of the bathroom. I saw a dead fish on the floor. Modu had never experienced a flood like this before. ‘The government issued no warning. They were totally unprepared.’ He used to own a small shop not far away, but the windows had been smashed in the flood and most of his wares were stolen or washed away. It would take a long time, he said, to rebuild his stock. No one here has insurance.

Borno isn’t known for floods, although Alau Dam has burst once before, in 1994, eight years after it was built. The water travelled even further on that occasion, flooding towns as far away as the state of Kebbi, more than a thousand kilometres away, making 400,000 people homeless and damaging several million naira’s worth of crops and property. Nigeria’s disaster preparation hasn’t improved much since then. One man, who remembered the first flood, told me he had survived both disasters in much the same way, fleeing his home with his children when the flood came and waiting in a camp until the waters receded.

By the time I arrived in Maiduguri from Lagos, most of the flood water had dried out, except for small areas, such as Hauwa’s street, where the water had nowhere to go. My host, Alhaja Lawan, showed me a video of a man paddling a canoe down a residential street. Someone had added fish and water emojis. I admired their grim sense of humour. ‘Today, you won’t see any of these things,’ she said. ‘It’s like before and after.’ She was right. As we drove through the city, Habib remarked every so often on the damaged buildings that lined the roads, pointing to the sunken roofs and broken windows, and comparing them with the newer buildings that had not suffered much – signs, he said, that the governor, Babagana Zulum, was ‘trying his best’. But as we walked through the side streets in poorer areas, we passed houses that had been emptied by their residents: the mud that plastered them refused to dry despite the heat.

Most journalists reporting on the flood drew parallels between the disaster and the Boko Haram insurgency: the area that had been affected by the flood also saw the worst of the violence. Between 2009 and 2018, murders and kidnappings were almost daily occurrences. Around 35,000 people were killed and 1.5 million displaced. The worst of the insurgency appears to be over, but the attacks haven’t stopped altogether; in early January, it was reported that forty farmers had been killed by militants. One of the flood survivors, Ahmed, told me that after Boko Haram killed his family, he took refuge in one of the Internally Displaced Persons camps run by the government with support from organisations like the Red Cross. These camps are supposed to provide shelter, food and basic security. The camps in Maiduguri are home to between 120,000 and 130,000 people, while those in the surrounding area shelter more than 400,000. There are at least two million displaced persons in Borno State, the highest figure in northern Nigeria. But the IDP camps have not always been able to protect people from the violence they are trying to escape. Recently it was reported that armed groups – some dressed like military personnel – are abducting residents for ransom.

After five years in a camp, Ahmed returned to Maiduguri in 2022, two years before the flood. When I met him, he was living a semi-vagrant existence, his house uninhabitable. Borno has been plagued by its association with Boko Haram, which affects everything from investment to infrastructure to aid. ‘It’s the way the outside world sees us,’ Habib told me. ‘But it’s not the full story.’ He didn’t want the flood to contribute to Maiduguri’s negative image. ‘It’s undergoing a slow process of recovery, one step at a time. People are resuming their daily activities.’ The city began to recover thanks in part to the efforts of wealthier citizens, who raise funds and provide relief for social issues affecting the city and Borno State. There is a common misconception that Maiduguri, and Borno more broadly, is primarily sustained by international aid bodies, but the reality is more complicated. Local organisations and individuals often take the largest role, and get the least attention.

The first thing I noticed in Maiduguri was the schools: all large buildings, a few storeys high, and freshly painted. Several of them were on Maiduguri Road in the heart of the city. Crowds of teenagers were coming and going in bright uniforms. Habib told me that Zulum is interested in education. He has a PhD in engineering and was a professor at the University of Maiduguri before becoming a politician. ‘Things weren’t like this before,’ Habib said. ‘You didn’t see schoolchildren on the streets and if an attack occurred, the schools would be closed for a few weeks.’ The presence of girls among the pupils is a victory for the city. Last year was the tenth anniversary of the Chibok kidnapping, when Boko Haram took 276 female students from a secondary school about two hours south of Maiduguri.

Before the insurgency, Maiduguri had a good reputation for education. It was what brought Habib here: he moved from Yobe, a neighbouring state, to study business at the University of Maiduguri. He described the experience as one of extremes. Maiduguri is one of the country’s top federal universities and is heavily protected by armed security guards. The campus is 41 square kilometres, making it feel like an island in the city. Habib felt safe there. But at the same time, he said, the city was a ‘war zone’. ‘You had to be on alert. You felt something could happen anywhere, at any time.’ When the alarms sounded, he would run back to his halls for safety. ‘Back then, a lot of suicide bombings happened in congested areas: the markets, mosques, churches, the post office.’ Since 2018, however, Maiduguri and Borno generally have become much safer, in part as a result of government efforts, at federal as well as state level, but most of all because of local resistance to the insurgency.

We drove through many of the places that Habib said had been inaccessible during the Boko Haram years, including the main commercial district: Baga Fish Market, Bama Motor Park and New Tashan Bama Motor Park (motor parks are like bus stations). Traders were active again, selling shoes, clothes and household goods. ‘We used to be advised by the government and NGOs to avoid overcrowded places and to be vigilant,’ Habib said. ‘They often used women for the suicide bombing attacks. You see them with their hijab and you don’t know what is under it. It’s bombs inside their hijab and they will just go to a crowded place and set off the bomb.’ But Habib didn’t want to dwell on that period. ‘We don’t have to worry about that any more,’ he told me. ‘Maiduguri is very safe.’

The words ‘Maiduguri is very safe’ came up in most of our conversations. One evening, driving back, Habib said that the city gates used to close at 4 p.m. because of Boko Haram’s roadside attacks. Groups of insurgents would target people driving home, abducting passengers and killing those who resisted. Sometimes they struck in the early morning, too. During the day, the roads were patrolled. ‘But now, God is kind, things have changed,’ Habib said. ‘It’s been a long time since we heard of anything like that. You can even leave Maiduguri after 5 o’clock now.’ I looked at the clock. It was gone 6 p.m. Habib stopped the car by a roadside stall and ordered some fara, a regional delicacy of fried grasshoppers seasoned with yaji, a spice mix. ‘You see, even the fara sellers are out now,’ he said.

According to Habib, most of the residents of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe were affected by the insurgency in some way. ‘Maybe a member of your family has died,’ he said. ‘At least someone in your extended family.’ I asked if he had been affected. ‘Yes,’ he said, but refused to elaborate, adding: ‘We lost so many people from Yobe.’ Friends from Maiduguri had also been killed or kidnapped. Yet despite this, Habib spoke with cautious optimism about completing his MA and his plans to study for a PhD. His repeated insistence that things were improving was, I realised, part of this need to look forwards, not backwards.

Maiduguri – and Borno State more broadly – is often misunderstood by Nigerians. It is one of the most deprived areas in the country. The multidimensional poverty rate in the state stands at 72.5 per cent, 9.5 points above the national average. As with the flood recovery, citizens have had to take matters into their own hands. Habib pointed out some members of the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF), a vigilante battalion that formed in response to the government’s failure to stave off Boko Haram. In the early years of the insurgency, large numbers of volunteers from all walks of life took up arms – machetes, locally manufactured guns and makeshift weapons – to defend the city. Now their role is to preserve the peace. ‘Even this road’ – Habib pointed to the highway we were driving slowly along – ‘no one could use this road during the insurgency. It wasn’t safe.’ During the flood, the CJTF had helped move families into camps and distribute supplies. One clue to the safety of the city was the presence of bicycles, Habib told me. Insurgents used motorbikes to move between towns and villages and to conduct raids, while everyone else used cars when they had to travel any distance. Now that life is safer again, people can ride bicycles and you never hear the revving of a motorbike.