The National Emergency Agency, NEMA, said at least 30 persons had died in the flood while 414,000 were displaced as 70 per cent of the city was submerged in flood water.

Speaking from Maiduguri where humanitarian workers are on the front line to provide immediate support to affected residents, Plan International Nigeria’s Food Security and Nutrition Specialist, Dr Emmanuel Nuhu, called on all stakeholders including the government, politicians, donor agencies, and INGOs to prioritise coordinated support for the residents.

“This is the worst flood in the state in over three decades and the washing away of debris from cemeteries, zoos, waste disposal sites, sewages, and other filthy locations put the residents especially children and girls in danger of contracting waterborne diseases such as cholera, giardiasis, salmonellosis and dysentery,” he said.

READ ALSO: Cholera: Four die, 36 in hospitals in Adamawa

He said: “The situation is dire for a population that has suffered displacement and hardship due to insurgency for more than 14 years.”

Also speaking, the Country Director of Plan International Nigeria, Charles Usie while commiserating with the governor and people of Borno State, said in a crisis like this, “children and women suffer most. Food is scarce and basic hygiene materials for adolescent girls and women are unavailable.”

He commended the state governor for showing leadership by personally leading relief support for the affected residents.

“Maiduguri is host to our biggest humanitarian intervention in the northeast of Nigeria. We are working round the clock to support victims many of who have lost their homes and are displaced,” Usie said.

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The Non-Governmental Organisation cited the recent Multidimensional Poverty Index, MPI, report issued by the National Bureau of Statistics which put the number of Nigerians living in poverty at 133 million out of a population of over 200 million.

Expressing worries about what he termed “distractive and unnecessary debate between the federal government and some of the state governors.”

The Country Director of Plan International Nigeria, Charles Usie, said that “the state of poverty as shown by the MPI is alarming and requires serious attention by the government at all levels.”

The report painted a grim picture of not only poverty but its impact on children, their health, education and nutrition.

Majority of the poor in Nigeria, it showed are children, as 67.5% of children under the age of 18 are poor and 70.1% of children under 5 are poor.

Usie expressed worries that children’s education was one of the most impacted by poverty with 57.8 million children of school-going age (6 to 15 years old) and 29% of all school-aged children not attending school.

The report indicated that 94% of all of these out-of-school children are poor, as Usie noticed “their situation of being out of school is tightly linked to multidimensional poverty.”

That, he said, was worrisome and not acceptable.

“What this translates to, is that 27% of all school-aged children are both poor and out of school,” he said.

Usie said that the listing of such variables such as food security, nutrition, child deprivation, school lag, water reliability, underemployment and security shocks provides like never before a clearer picture of the incidence and intensity of poverty in the country and makes available data that shows the dimensions of poverty at all relevant sectors and levels.

He however expressed worry that the government at the federal and state levels since the release of the report had not come out with an appropriate response to the issues contained in the report.

“What has been in the news from both the federal government and the states are recriminations on whom to hold responsible for the state of multidimensional poverty in the country. Rather than the distractive squabbles over who to blame, both federal and state governments should devote time and energy to addressing matters arising from the report and give assurance to Nigerians that there are some serious and well thought out responses to the issues,” Usie said.

He said further that “the country was rich enough in human capital and natural resources to walk back the suffering of the people especially children and girls through prudent and efficient management of the resources.”

The country director also called for clear disaggregation of the sex or gender of the survey respondents in subsequent reports to give a deeper meaning and understanding of the dimension of poverty to enable adequately tailored intervention by relevant stakeholders.

He called for particular intervention to be focused on rural communities where much of the reported poverty resides.

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Speaking at a stakeholder dialogue with support from Kimberly-Clark to commemorate this year’s Menstrual Hygiene Day with the theme ‘‘Menstruation Matters: My Period, My Pride,” Country Director of the Plan International in Nigeria, Mr Charles Usie, said the totality of a girl’s life would remain incomplete without adequate menstrual health.

The hybrid event which was attended by adolescent girls, relevant government officials, development partners, civil society organisations and journalists featured panel discussions, experience sharing from the Bauchi online participants and policy engagement.

He said menstruation was neither an illness nor a problem to be ashamed about while calling for open conversation on the subject to eradicate stigma which he described as unnecessary.

“At some point in our history, this was how we advocated to eradicate HIV/AIDS. One of the things we did was to advocate for free condoms. Menstrual health is an issue; let us also raise our voices so that it will get to a point where sanitary pads will become free for young girls,” he said.

Mr Usie emphasised that “you cannot look at the totality of the life of a girl child and not talk about menstrual health and that is why at this time of the year, we stand with all the girls in Nigeria and across the world to say menstrual health is not just a girl or a woman issue but all of us. At Plan International, we identify with menstrual health because it is not a shame, it is not a secret, it is not a problem neither is it a sickness.”

Plan International Nigeria which is currently running a project on menstrual health in Bauchi state funded by Kimberly-Clark, has over the years, provided over 9,000 dignity kits to girls, empowering them with information on menstrual hygiene management, increased knowledge on periods to over 6, 000 girls, with a pool of community members who are better informed about periods, and galvanized Women in WASH in some of our intervention states, to take on the sensitization of in-school girls on their periods with support from the education authorities.

The organisation has also built 155 gender-segregated toilets in schools, which has provided an enabling environment for WASH in schools with regards to Menstrual hygiene management.

Plan International started 85 years ago and has been operating in Nigeria since 2014 with presence in more than 70 countries across the world.

“We want to see 200 million girls standing strong together globally for the next five years. It is ambitious but we know we cannot achieve it alone which is why we collaborate with stakeholders,” the country director emphasised.

In Nigeria, he said the organisation is targeting “10 million girls which will be reviewed” adding that “we want to see 10 million girls standing strong for global change.”

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