Nigerian President
Goodluck Jonathan has visited some of the hundreds of thousands of people made
homeless by the country's worst flooding in at least 50 years, calling it a
"national disaster".
At least 140
people have been killed, hundreds of thousands uprooted and tens of thousands
of hectares of farmland have been submerged since the start of July, raising
concerns about food security, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA)
said on Friday.
Vast stretches of
Nigeria has been submerged by floods in the past few weeks, as major rivers
like the Niger, the continent's third longest, burst their banks.
An estimated
623,900 people had been displaced and 152,575 hectares of farmland destroyed so
far
In Kogi, a
northern state that has been the worst affected and which Jonathan visited on
Thursday, NEMA state coordinator Ishaya Chonoko said 623,900 people had been
displaced and 152,575 hectares of farmland destroyed so far.
"We are very
sad over these flood incidences in the country.
It is a national
disaster," Jonathan said with a sombre expression, after casting an eye
over the makeshift displacement camp huddling 738 people together in Dankolo
primary school.
"We are thinking
of how to settle you all back to your places after the floods. Government is
doing everything possible to cushion the effects on you ... it will soon be
over."
Nigeria, which
gets heavy tropical rains from May to September, usually suffers from seasonal
flash floods but almost never on this scale.
Floods have also
devastated the Niger Delta, home to Africa's biggest energy industry, where the
Niger river fans into creeks before emptying itself into the Atlantic.
There has been no
reported impact on crude oil production, but a cocoa industry body said last
month that cocoa output would fall far short of a 300,000 tonne target for last
season.
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