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2026-11-11 Africa Subsaharan
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COP31: Nigeria Still Rebuilding Broken Alau Dam Two Years After Disastrous Floods in Borno
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[HumAngleMedia] As Nigeria participates in the ongoing COP31, the money and promises that followed the failure of Alau Dam and the resulting 2024 Maiduguri floods raise a harder question: what has changed, and are people any better protected?
By Al'amin Umar
9 Nov 2026
| COP31 is this year’s UN climate change conference, where poor countries demand money from rich countries for things they won’t do, so that the rich countries can pretend they’re making a difference in something that apparently would have been counterproductive had it actually been done — the latest data appearing to indicate that were it not for the small amount of warming humanity has contributed to the system, Earth would have already tipped into the next ice age. |
Every morning, Ibrahim Muhammed paddles his canoe onto Lake Alau to fish off the shore of Laujeri, a rural community in the Jere Local Government Area (LGA) of Borno State in North East Nigeria. Now 42, Ibrahim began fishing at 15, and that is the only trade he has ever known. After floodwaters swept through Maiduguri, Borno’s capital city, in 2024, falling water levels and shrinking catches made the lake less dependable for fishermen like him.
“The fish have reduced. It has reduced with the water,” he told me on the bank of the lake on Wednesday, Oct. 21. Some days, he said, the catch is good; on others, it is not. He considers himself fortunate, as what he earns from the smaller catch is enough to provide for his four children.
The shore has grown into its own settlement in Laujeri, with makeshift thatch and zinc shelters lining the water. Traders arrive to buy the fresh catch, and children move between the fishermen and traders. Some hawk sachet water; others pick fingerlings from fishing nets. Further inland, mud houses stand behind fences made from dried maize, millet, and sorghum stalks.
Alau Dam, which sustains these rural livelihoods, was completed in 1988 and covers about 16 kilometres south of Maiduguri, according to the Chad Basin Development Authority (CBDA). The reservoir was designed to irrigate 8,000 hectares in the Jere Bowl and supply drinking water to Maiduguri. A 2019 water market assessment identified the dam as a major source of the city’s water supply, with a maximum daily supply capacity of 67,000 cubic metres.
After heavy rainfall and excessive inflows into the reservoir in September 2024, part of the Alau Dam structure collapsed, and floodwaters swept into Maiduguri and nearby communities. The federal government later disputed descriptions of the event as a collapse of the whole dam, saying an embankment failed to hold back water from smaller rivers and streams. The flooding destroyed homes and infrastructure, displaced hundreds of thousands of people, and disrupted livelihoods.
More at the link
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Posted by badanov 2026-11-11 00:00||
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