LAGOS: The United Nations Wednesday said it had released $5 million to help flood victims in Nigeria, where the rainy season has killed more than 300 people and caused widespread damage.
The money from its Central Emergency Relief Fund will help “scale up the flood response and address critical needs in three of the most flood affected states in Nigeria,” the UN said in a statement. They are Borno and Bauchi in the northeast, and Sokoto in the northwest.
The flooding has affected more than 1.2 million people in at least 31 out of Nigeria’s 36 states in the West African country, according to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).
Around 127,500 hectares of farmland has also been affected.
“Floods across Nigeria have created a crisis within a crisis,” said Mohamed Malick Fall, the UN coordinator in Nigeria.
“Millions of people were already facing critical levels of food insecurity before the floods because of economic hardships that have made it exceedingly difficult for the most vulnerable to feed themselves and their families.
“The floods have compounded people’s suffering.”
The latest emergency aid is in addition to the $6 million already released by the Nigerian Humanitarian Fund.
Several Nigerian states hit by flooding have seen rises in the cases of cholera.
Last month, severe flooding disaster killed at least 31 people and forced around 400,000 out of their homes in northeastern city of Maiduguri, the Borno state capital.
In 2022, more than 500 people died and 1.4 million were displaced in the country’s worst floods in a decade.
UN releases $5 million for flood victims in Nigeria
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UN releases $5 million for flood victims in Nigeria
- The flooding has affected more than 1.2 million people in at least 31 out of Nigeria’s 36 states
- Several Nigerian states hit by flooding have seen rises in the cases of cholera
‘Doomsday Clock’ moves closer to midnight over threats from nukes, climate change, AI
- At the end of the Cold War, the clock was as close as 17 minutes to midnight. In the past few years, to address rapid global changes, the group has changed from counting down the minutes until midnight to counting down the seconds
WASHINGTON: Earth is closer than it’s ever been to destruction as Russia, China, the US and other countries become “increasingly aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic,” a science-oriented advocacy group said Tuesday as it advanced its “Doomsday Clock” to 85 seconds till midnight.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist members had an initial demonstration on Friday and then announced their results on Tuesday.
The scientists cited risks of nuclear war, climate change, potential misuse of biotechnology and the increasing use of artificial intelligence without adequate controls as it made the annual announcement, which rates how close humanity is from ending.
Last year the clock advanced to 89 seconds to midnight.
Since then, “hard-won global understandings are collapsing, accelerating a winner-takes-all great power competition and undermining the international cooperation” needed to reduce existential risks, the group said.
They worry about the threat of escalating conflicts involving nuclear-armed countries, citing the Russia-Ukraine war, May’s conflict between India and Pakistan and whether Iran is capable of developing nuclear weapons after strikes last summer by the US and Israel.
International trust and cooperation is essential because, “if the world splinters into an us-versus-them, zero-sum approach, it increases the likelihood that we all lose,” said Daniel Holz, chair of the group’s science and security board.
The group also highlighted droughts, heat waves and floods linked to global warming, as well as the failure of nations to adopt meaningful agreements to fight global warming — singling out US President Donald Trump’s efforts to boost fossil fuels and hobble renewable energy production.
Starting in 1947, the advocacy group used a clock to symbolize the potential and even likelihood of people doing something to end humanity.
At the end of the Cold War, it was as close as 17 minutes to midnight. In the past few years, to address rapid global changes, the group has changed from counting down the minutes until midnight to counting down the seconds.
The group said the clock could be turned back if leaders and nations worked together to address existential risks.
