An 80-year-old victim of flood that sacked five villages in Warawa Local Government Area of Kano State, Malam Garba Tanka, has decried his condition at the Katarkawa resettlement centre, saying, “I’m dying gradually in the camp”.
Tanka told Leadership SUNDAY that life has become worthless and so difficult for him to conform to at the resettlement centre due to lack of toilet facility and food. He added that he would have preferred to die in his home town than stay in the camp and die.
Our correspondent reports that fresh flood incidents have ravaged five villages in Warawa Local Government Area of the state, displacing over 10,000 people, domestic animals and submerging hundreds of farmlands.
Several houses were also destroyed, but there was no report of lives lost in the flood that washed away several farmlands in the five affected villages.
The villages are Larabar Gidan Sarki, Katarkawa, Wanbato, Gishiri Wuya and Garin Dau. They have now turned to ghost towns due to heavy downpour on Wednesday night that caused surging of the Kano River which passes through Wudil linking up to Hadejia town in Jigawa State.
But residents of these towns have started going back to their homes as they have rejected life in the resettlement centre.
Tanka said authorities should take him back home where he can live with his children and grand-children, and enjoy his local meals, stressing that he escaped with his family and grand children to the camp, unknown to him that life would be worst there.
Sitting calmly under a tree at the premises of the public school in Katarkawa, Tanka painted a gory story of life at the temporary abode, stressing that “I’m stranded here. For two days running now, I have not taken anything, no food, no water and the little assistance coming from local government officials are simply for the survival of the fittest. I have no strength to struggle with anyone. It seems everyone is on his own.”
The old man was surrounded by some of his grand-children all within the age bracket of two and four years old.