On Thursday, Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum offered assistance to more than 10,000 residents in the Kala-Balge Local Government Area, which is plagued by both yearly flooding and elephant migration, a double tragedy.
The majority of the local inhabitants’ farm produce is largely consumed by the wild animals that migrate from the coasts of Cameroon Lagdo Dam to Lake Chad every farming season. This is because the elephant paths pass through a larger portion of the area.
This year, the Cameroon Dam’s annual flooding isolated much of the LGA from the rest of the state, making it impossible for locals to get essential supplies from other parts of the state.
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The Kala-Balge communities are experiencing crippling hardships as a result of these twin catastrophes.
As a result, Zulum—who could only enter the LGA by helicopter—hurried to Rann, the LGA’s headquarters, where he oversaw the N100 million distribution to the more than 10,000 households.
Male heads of homes, housewives, and women in vulnerable situations were among the recipients of the N10,000 cash apiece.
“Our primary purpose for coming to Rann, the Kala-Balge headquarters, is to give this community financial support as they have been cut off from the rest of the nation for the past six months due to flooding,” Zulum stated.
Regarding the damage caused by the elephants, the governor remained mute. However, Zulum raced to Kala-Balge “to provide succour to the communities mainly for the loss of their farm produce to the migrating elephants,” an unnamed government official told The PUNCH.
Prof Mohammed Abba Jimme of the University of Maiduguri Center for Arid Zone Studies, the representative for the Kala-Balge community, however, called the loss of farm output “unquantifiable.”
“The entire local government area has virtually lost all its food this year to the elephants,” he said to The PUNCH.
He claimed to be creating an exhaustive list of farmers whose crops were ruined by the wild animals.