Inside the refugee camps threatened by extreme floods
Welcome back to Climate Weekly!
In today’s issue we’ll introduce you to Agbaje Ayomide, a freelance storyteller from Nigeria. He’ll tell us about the refugee camps at risk of extreme floods in his country.
We also have an important announcement at the end!
Hi! I am Agbaje, a Nigerian freelance writer living in Ado-Ekiti, in the Southwestern part of the country. Last month, I visited the Tse-yandev refugee camp, located some 450km from my city. There, climate change is worsening an already tough crisis.
The camps give refuge to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), most of which are women fleeing conflict. I spoke with some of them about the heavy rains that are causing extreme floods in the camps.
Refugees live in fragile and leaking makeshift tents, made with old mosquito nets and covered by palm fronds.
When the rain comes, people here run to protect their remaining belongings. “My kids and I are always afraid and sad whenever it’s about to rain till it stops,” a middle-aged woman named Veronica Igbalumo tells me.
Of course, climate change truly has a global scale of impact, but its local impacts are affecting the most vulnerable people in Nigeria. A recent study showed that 20 camps in Benue state —such as this one— are at risk of extreme floods due to climate change.
Many people who lived normal lives in their villages end up at these camps due to conflicts such as the Fulani crisis —a clash between farmers and herdsmen—, among other humanitarian crises.
Veronica told me she can’t go back to her village, as Fulani herdsmen have attacked farmers like her.
And yet, when they arrive at the camps, another issue threatens their livelihood: extreme weather. Hearing about this and how the camps suffer abandonment from the government led me to pursue the story.
I interviewed some refugees in their local language through my translator. Esther, an old-aged IDP, recounts her experience since she arrived at the camp in 2019, and how floods wash away and destroy her remaining household items.
Finding solutions won’t be easy. From my talks with climate scientists, government plans are so far insufficient to tackle the floods.
Despite a budget of $61,815 USD for the rehabilitation and camp management of IDPs in 2020, no projects were aimed at preparing for floods.
However, the IDPs themselves keep hopes alive for what the future holds for them despite their present situation. Read the full story with my findings from the field.
Thanks for reading this issue of Climate Weekly. We’re excited to share with you a special announcement: we’ll transform this into a daily newsletter during COP26.
We’ll have a team of amazing journalists in Glasgow and also a team of writers contributing online from many different countries. We’ll share stories from a climate justice perspective. You can also follow our coverage in our website.
After COP26 is over, we’ll come back with our weekly issues, which are brought to you by Climate Tracker’s amazing community from all over the world. Until next week!