Maiduguri, Nigeria – Halimah Abdullahi has spent most of the last week peering out of the gates of the displaced person’s camp she and her family are squatting in, hoping that her three-year-old toddler, Musa, will suddenly come waddling towards her, safe and sound.

The boy disappeared as Abdullahi struggled to join a queue and register for the cooked food aid the Borno State government had been giving out to displaced people in the camp. Her family had lost their meagre belongings last week after massive floods swept through their previous abode – a ramshackle hut hewn from tents.

As Abdullahi hurried to the crowd at the enrolment point last Wednesday, a baby strapped to her back, she asked her eldest, who is 11, to take care of the two younger children. Somehow, Musa, whose words are still a blabber, wandered off. More than a week later, she has no idea where the boy could be.

“I’ve searched for him all over this camp,” the housewife told Al Jazeera in her native Hausa, her voice laced with apprehension. “I checked with one old woman at the camp who had been gathering all the lost children. I’ve gone to the camp’s entrance gate more than 10 times to ask the security guards but all in vain. The latest I heard was that a girl and a boy were found, but when I went to check, my child wasn’t among them.”

Abdullahi is one of an estimated 300,000 people displaced by floods that hit Nigeria’s northeastern city of Maiduguri early last week. Some 37 people have died, according to government figures. A million people were affected by the deluge, which authorities say is the worst in 30 years.

Heavy rainfall in recent weeks had caused the Alau Dam, located just a few kilometres outside Maiduguri, to collapse for a third time since 1994. Northeast Nigeria normally receives much less rain than other parts during the annual July to September rainy season. However, unusually high levels of rainfall across West and Central Africa, which some experts link to climate change, have affected more than four million people, from Liberia to Chad.

As in Abdullahi’s case, the abruptness of the tragedy contributed to people going missing and several families losing track of children, Chachu Tadicha, a senior official with the aid organisation Save the Children, told Al Jazeera. “People were running helter and skelter and because of that, some lost connection with each other.”

Tadicha’s team counted 88 unaccompanied children last week. By Wednesday morning this week, 76 had been reunited with their families, he said, but eight others, like Musa, are not yet home.

Twice displaced

The waters came at night last Monday in much of Maiduguri, taking many by surprise. Hundreds of thousands woke up to see their houses filling with water.

By the morning of Tuesday, September 10, almost half of the city was immersed in water, authorities said. Drone shots of Maiduguri at the time showed large swaths of land nearly completely submerged. In some parts, the tipped roofs of buildings managed to peek above the muddy waters, in others, there was nothing to see.

People are escorted through floodwaters on a military boat in Maiduguri on September 12, 2024 [Abdu Marte/AFP]

Those who could not flee quickly enough, or who underestimated how much water would come, got trapped.

One of them was Fati Laminu. Last Monday, local officials in her area had told residents to fill sacks with sand and block the waters that had just started to flow in the community’s direction.

Later that night, she said, some government officials announced with megaphones that people should evacuate. Many, including Laminu, didn’t. She, her husband and two children filled more bags with sand to block their home.

“But when the water came, it swept it all away,” Laminu told Al Jazeera. “It reached our knees, then our stomachs and our chests. That was when the children started drowning. Luckily, some men helped in rescuing us.”

Now in the Gubio Camp for displaced people, Laminu says she managed to escape with only the clothes on her back. Her younger brother is missing and her brother-in-law’s body was found floating in the waters.

Government officials and soldiers deployed on trucks and canoes attempted to fetch the thousands trapped in the floodwaters last Tuesday. However, the waters were so high in some areas that rescuers could not access them. Some people were forced to climb up on tree branches and hang there for hours as the waters rose.

Amid the disaster, the Sanda Kyarimi Park Zoo, located in the city centre, announced that its premises had been decimated and that 80 percent of the wild animals in its care had died or broken free of their cages and escaped, including snakes, lions and crocodiles. At least one child has died in a displaced person’s camp from a snake attack, Tadicha of Save the Children said.

“The reptiles, we couldn’t save them [as they died or escaped], but most of the big animals are still alive,” Mohammed Emat Kois, Borno State’s commissioner of environment, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday. Among the rescued animals were ostriches and lions, he said.

Before last week, Maiduguri was already home to camps for internally displaced people (IDPs), where hundreds who fled conflict in the region live. Borno State is burdened by a 15-year-running armed rebellion by Boko Haram. The armed group is against Western influence in the region and seeks to create an Islamic caliphate.

It has been heavily subdued in the past eight years, but at the height of the conflict in 2015, suicide attacks that killed dozens were a regular occurrence. Markets, churches, mosques and schools were hit. The conflict caused some 35,000 deaths and displaced 3.5 million people in Borno and neighbouring Yobe and Adamawa states.

Abdullahi, whose son is missing, was among them. Like thousands of others, she and her family lived for years in a tent in Garkin Block, one of several IDP camps in Maiduguri that relied on aid organisations for food and sustenance.

Displaced people were already facing severe food shocks compounded by 30-year-high food inflation figures in Nigeria. In some parts of the region that are inaccessible because of Boko Haram control, many people are likely to face emergency levels of food crisis through January 2025, the United States Agency for International Development has warned.

Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum has pushed since last year to shut down all camps and encourage residents to return home – attempts to rid Maiduguri of its “city-in-need” image. Garkin Block was one of four remaining camps still open before the floods arrived last week. Now, there are an additional 26 IDP camps across the city, including at 16 schools, housing those affected by the disaster.

Many houses were submerged following a dam collapse in Maiduguri last week [Musa Ajit Borno/AP]

Waiting to go home

Officials scrambled to house displaced people in the hours after last week’s floods. It took two days for authorities to settle her family in Gubio Camp, Laminu told Al Jazeera, adding that conditions there are hard.

While cooked food was distributed last week, authorities have switched to raw food instead. The plan is to give each adult a one-time cash transfer of 10,000 naira ($6), encourage people to return home as the waters recede and dismantle the camps by next week, aid workers working alongside the authorities say.

“That’s more sustainable in the long run,” Tadicha of Save the Children said. “We will be able to support them in rebuilding and households will receive more cash transfers.”

Children in some schools are currently out of classes because some of the displaced are housed in their schools – one of the reasons officials are keen for people to return home quickly.

But some like Laminu doubt the adequacy of the funds and the camp arrangements, which some describe as crowded.

“The government is trying but we really suffered and are still suffering … Not much shelter and no food, and there are mosquitoes all over the place. I have never experienced such a disaster in my life,” she said.

Authorities also face heavy criticism over prison transfers. Some Boko Haram members were among 281 prisoners who escaped the medium-security Maiduguri prison as they were being evacuated from the flood-damaged premises. Seven of those were recaptured by Sunday, a statement from the Nigerian Correctional Service read. The agency said, “the incident does not impede or affect public safety”.

Fears of a disease outbreak following the floods have so far been averted, health workers say. But many hospitals, including the largest teaching hospital in the region, the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, are among tens of damaged buildings.

Some of the displaced say they are looking forward to returning home, despite the damage in their communities.

“I learned that some parts of my house have been destroyed – we only have the children’s room and a parlour that’s safe,” Tijanni Hussaini, a firewood seller said. “We will go and clean it and wait for the government’s support.”

Others, like Abdullahi, say there’s little to return to, with her previous home destroyed, and her son still missing.

“I can’t leave this camp because I’m hoping that my child will be found,” she said.