The Interview Editors
Borno State Governor, Professor Babagana Umara Zulum, on Tuesday, spent the most part of his day in Rann, where he personally supervised the distribution of N100m to 10, 000 households.
Rann is the headquarters of Kala-Balge Local Government Area, remotely located around a border between Nigeria, Cameroon linking to Chadian territory.
Reports say that Governor Zulum flew from Maiduguri to Kala-Balge on board a helicopter because it is currently impossible to access the LGA by road due to massive waterlog caused by discharge from a dam in Cameroonian territory in July 2019.
The Governor, was accompanied by Dr. Zainab Gimba, member of House of Representative for Kala-Balge, Bama and Ngala federal constituency, Kala-Balge’s representative at the state assembly and a special adviser from there.
The officials, led by Zulum, supervised the distribution of N100m in cash to the residents in Rann, whose only option is to trek about 10km to border communities in order to buy food and other basic needs.
“Each of the 10,000 households in the community was given between N10, 000 and N15,000 cash because there is no banking service. Zulum had to fly the cash as last option.
“Male householders received N15,000 each, while their female counterparts received N10,000 each,” a local official in the governor’s entourage told our correspondent.
More than 10,000 households in the agrarian community of Rann, have been trapped while crops planted last year were destroyed by a herd of 250 elephants sighted by UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) officials from their helicopter back in December 2019.
Farmlands still flooded cannot be cultivated by the residents forcing them to completely depend on aid transported to them through humanitarian air services.
Despite 25 years of existence, Rann is usually inaccessible during rainy season as there is neither road nor bridge linking the council headquarters with the rest of Borno State.
The council is also not connected to the national grid for electricity supply.
