A team comprising various organisations under the United Nations arrived in Maiduguri on an assessment visit over the Alau Dam flood disaster.
The team which also comprised international and national NGOs led by UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Nigeria, Mohamed Fall, arrived in Maiduguri on Saturday.
The team visited camps and interacted with victims and visited Gov. Babagana.
Fall assured the government and people of Borno of UN support in addressing the challenges.
“We are all with you in sympathy and solidarity and we will translate it into action.
“I want to tell you that we will not spare any of our resources in this response.
“We will refocus resources designed for some other interventions to see how we can bring them towards scaling up this response,” Fall said.
He said the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) would do a comprehensive post disaster assessment looking at setting up a recovery plan.
Responding, Gov. Zulum thanked the UN delegation for its series of interventions in the state, assuring the government commitment to collaborate with them.
Zulum, who spoke on the magnitude of destruction caused by the flood, urged the UN agencies to first focus on the immediate needs of the victims such as food, health, shelter, water, sanitation and hygiene.
“We need to immediately start fumigation of areas identified as safe to guard against outbreaks and to make them ready for people to go back to their homes.”
He said that some people using schools as camps need to be supported to go back to their homes within the shortest possible time to enable children to go back to school.
“Our children have suffered from lack of education for a long time due to insurgency and we cannot afford to miss this session completely.”
The governor said with support from reliable partners, his administration would not allow the flood incident to deter it from pursuing its development plan.
