VIEW FROM THE GALLERY BY MAHMUD JEGA One city wag said the Biblical-proportion flood that overcame whole sections of the city of Maiduguri last week was second in national impact only to the recent increase in fuel prices, but I did not agree. We are yet to have a final tally of the Maiduguri calamity, including the number of lives lost, the injuries suffered, the number of houses and property washed away, critical infrastructure destroyed, productive man-hours lost, the hunger and homelessness suffered, disease outbreaks that could follow, and the anguish suffered by parents separated from their children by the floods. You get a certain measure of the calamity from videos of major highways turned to gushing rivers; women, children and the elderly wading through gushing waters, grabbing anything they could for support; University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital’s priceless cancer therapy and diagnostic machines swimming in the currents; some youths sitting on the rooftops of their houses, only a meter or so above gushing waters; Shehu of Borno’s palace flooded; Vice President of the Federal Republic and the Governor of Borno State wading through waist-high water in order to reach the Shehu’s palace, their security aides forming a protective ring around them in case water tried to wash away the big men; claims, though disputed, that hundreds of convicts and awaiting trial persons escaped from the medium security prison, some of them allegedly Boko Haram chieftains.
The Na.