By Farouk Pantami (Jigawa State Correspondent)
As Jigawa State government continues to count its loses following the menace of flood arising from last week's heavy downpour, the state government, at the weekend, said that the death toll has risen to twenty, while 50,000 families were displaced and thousands of houses and farmlands destroyed by the flood.
The Jigawa State Executive Secretary of the State Emergency Management Agency, (SEMA), Yusuf Sani, made this disclosure. He stated that those affected were mostly children as a result of a collapsed building caused by heavy rainfall. Earlier, news reports had it about sixteen person lost their lives while thousands of houses and farmlands were ravaged by the heavy downpour which occurred last week.
The Jigawa SEMA boss, explained that the flood displaced over 50,000 families, and thousands of farmlands were also submerged. He said so far, the agency is providing emergency relief to the affected victims residing temporarily inside mosques, primary schools and relatives’ houses. “We were providing all the necessary emergency reliefs to the affected victims, including, food, medicine, sugar, canoes and temporary shelter,” he said.
However, Jigawa State Governor, Muhammad Badaru Abubakar, has expressed deep concern over the flood that ravaged some parts of the state, killing many people and destroying thousands of houses and farmlands. The governor's reaction was contained in a statement signed by his Special Adviser on New Media, Auwalu Sankara. The governor sympathized with families of the deceased and those that lost their properties in the ravaging flood.
Governor Badaru Abubakar, according the statement, has directed the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) to conduct an assessment tour of the flooding to ascertain the level of damages done in order for government to mitigate the adverse economic and sundry impact of the flood to the affected citizens. NNL.
