Borno State, the once peaceful state on Nigeria’s northern border with Chad Republic, Niger Republic and Cameroon is the epicentre of Boko Haram’s book-ban battles and decades-long bloodshed.

By 1:00 am on Tuesday, September 10, 2024, Borno’s twenty-two-year trademark of “Sorrow, Tears, and Blood” was updated to “Borno, Flood, and Blood.”

The spillway of Alau Dam in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, collapsed after heavy rainfall, flooding the entire city and leaving half of it under water, displacing over one million people and submerging thousands of houses.

Unlike the lament in Fela Anikulapo’s song, on how “police and army” operations always leave a trail of sorrow, tears, and blood in communities, the lament in Borno now has a different cause.

The “home of peace” is caught in a crossfire of bullets and bombs on the one side, and renegade snakes and escapist crocodiles on the other – drowning livestock floating along and deadly beasts lurking in the murky waters of flooded roads, streets, and compounds.

Regardless of the cause, the police or the army, Boko Haram or Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP), a broken Alau Dam or a broken accountability system, the familiar sword or a flash flood, the people’s lot is the same sorrow, tears, and blood.

The people of Borno grapple with economic losses, health hazards, and food insecurity in a long-drawn humanitarian crisis that has left its people displaced, destitute, or dead.

Borno

Borno, with the monicker, “Home of Peace,” was once just another state in Nigeria’s northern region, before its embers of forced ignorance, fanned into contempt for the liberties of education, sparked a bloody trail of violence that is yet to end. The state was the birthplace of the terror group, Boko Haram, in 2002 and has since become Nigeria’s headquarters of sorrow.

In 2015, at the peak of its power and territorial control, Boko Haram — which means “Western education is forbidden” — surpassed the Islamic State group (ISIS) in its terror and ranked as the world’s deadliest terrorist group on the Global Terrorism Index. Since 2009, Boko Haram has killed tens of thousands of people in Nigeria and displaced more than two million others.

According to Human Rights Watch, 2023, “Boko Haram and its splinter factions, including the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), continued to carry out attacks in the northeast and expanded their activities beyond the region.”

Besides attacks by Boko Haram in Borno State, other forms of violence—including riots and assaults on civilians by groups such as the Fulani Ethnic Militia, military forces, and communal militias—have claimed over 32,388 lives in Borno between 2015 and 2023.

When these forces of nature strike (material forces of nature such as a flood or material and mental force of nature such as a human), they leave behind “sorrow, tears, and blood – them regular trademark,” as Fela Anikulapo Kuti aptly put it, resolving the mood in Borno in despair.

Flood

This time, the anguish in Borno had an unfamiliar face — a destructive force, unlike the familiar horrors the state had endured before – Flood! 

The Alau Dam collapsed, and reports indicate that nearly half of the city is now submerged. Before 2024, the dam had broken thrice: thirty years ago, in 1994, in 2012 and 2022.

Between January and September 2024, Borno residents have been enduring a wave of distress following a series of floods that resulted in casualties.

Since January, flooding in Borno has affected about Twenty-Seven Thousand (26,687) persons and displaced over 7,198 persons. 

Two years before, the floods affected Sixty-Six Thousand (66,216) people in Borno alone. The 2022 floods affected 34 of Nigeria’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.

Four northeast and four northwest states, along with one state each from the south-south and north-central regions, are among the top 10 most heavily flooded states between January and September 2024.

It’s still three months to the end of the year. One may expect more flooding incidents in subsequent days. For instance, the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMET) has alerted Adamawa State over an impending three-day rainfall starting on the 16th of September.