According to the ministry’s preliminary assessment, Bayelsa State is not one of the top 10 states that have been most severely impacted by the recent floods, according to Sadiya Farouq, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management, and Social Development.
At the weekly ministerial briefing on Thursday, the minister told reporters from State House that Jigawa is actually the worst-hit state.
She made the remark in response to statements made by Chief Edwin Clark, an elder statesman and the founder of the Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), who pleaded with the federal government to intervene and help flood victims in the Niger Delta rather than abandon them.
The number of documented deaths and displaced people per state, the number of injuries, the number of partially damaged, entirely damaged, and farmland damaged homes, according to the ministry, were the indices utilized to reach the conclusion.
The Federal Government’s flood data as of October 24, 2022, showed that 257,913 people in Bayelsa and 166,076 people in Jigawa were affected. Jigawa saw 68,883 displaced people while Bayelsa saw 219,471 displaced people.
According to estimates, there were 81 and 148 injured people in Bayelsa and Jigawa, respectively. Additionally, Jigawa had 91 fatalities while Bayelsa recorded 58.
According to estimates, 26,509 homes in Bayelsa and 1,564 in Jigawa were partially destroyed by flooding, while 703 farmlands in Bayelsa and 3,849 in Jigawa also suffered damage.
The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) reports that the recent severe floods that affected more than 20 states have resulted in over 600 fatalities and millions of displaced people.
In Lagos, Yobe, Borno, Taraba, Adamawa, Edo, Delta, Kogi, Niger, Plateau, Benue, Ebonyi, Anambra, Bauchi, Gombe, Kano, Jigawa, Zamfara, Kebbi, Sokoto, Imo, Abia States, and the Federal Capital Territory, homes and agricultural land have been drowned.
The floods of 2022 have garnered global “solidarity.” King Charles III expressed his sympathies for Nigeria for the “devastating” happenings in a letter to President Muhammadu Buhari.
Suleiman Adamu, the minister of water resources, was given 90 days by President Muhammadu Buhari last month to create a thorough plan of action to prevent a flood calamity in Nigeria.