‘A disaster’: Homes lost, relatives missing in floods in northeast Nigeria

Floods have displaced 300,000 people and damaged thousands of buildings, affecting one million people in Maiduguri.

Maiduguri, Nigeria – Halimah Abdullahi has spent most of the last week peering out of the gates of the displaced person’s camp she and her family are squatting in, hoping that her three-year-old toddler, Musa, will suddenly come waddling towards her, safe and sound.

The boy disappeared as Abdullahi struggled to join a queue and register for the cooked food aid the Borno State government had been giving out to displaced people in the camp. Her family had lost their meagre belongings last week after massive floods swept through their previous abode – a ramshackle hut hewn from tents.

As Abdullahi hurried to the crowd at the enrolment point last Wednesday, a baby strapped to her back, she asked her eldest, who is 11, to take care of the two younger children. Somehow, Musa, whose words are still a blabber, wandered off. More than a week later, she has no idea where the boy could be.

“I’ve searched for him all over this camp,” the housewife told Al Jazeera in her native Hausa, her voice laced with apprehension. “I checked with one old woman at the camp who had been gathering all the lost children. I’ve gone to the camp’s entrance gate more than 10 times to ask the security guards but all in vain. The latest I heard was that a girl and a boy were found, but when I went to check, my child wasn’t among them.”

Abdullahi is one of an estimated 300,000 people displaced by floods that hit Nigeria’s northeastern city of Maiduguri early last week. Some 37 people have died, according to government figures. A million people were affected by the deluge, which authorities say is the worst in 30 years.