At least 60 die of heat stroke in Maiduguri

At least 60 people have died of heat stroke in one week in Nigeria’s northeastern city of Maiduguri, 875 km from the capital Abuja, state-owned Radio Kaduna reported on Tuesday.

The radio quoted Ibrahim Kida, chief medical director of the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, as saying an intense heat wave, with temperatures of between 55-60 degrees Celsius, had claimed lives in the region of Nigeria nearest to the encroaching Sahara Desert.

“In the last one week at least 60 people died of heat stroke caused by intense heat…between 55 degrees and 60 degrees centigrade,” Kida was quoted by the radio as saying.

The situation has been linked to the late arrival of rainfall. The first major rain in the area was reported on Monday, two months later than in the preceding years.

Apart from the death toll from intense heat in Maiduguri, late rains in much of northern Nigeria have raised fears of likely crop failure and food shortages in the region. In recent weeks, religious leaders in the predominantly Muslim region have led prayers for rains in order to avert what they considered a looming disaster.

Much of the northern fringes of Nigeria, bordering Chad and Niger, have in recent years been under the threat of an ever-encroaching Sahara Desert. Border states in this region include Borno, Yobe, Jigawa, Katsina, Zamfara and Sokoto.

Last month President Olusegun Obasanjo launched a tree planting campaign in the northern town of Katsina, with the aim to re-green huge swathes of the region made vulnerable to desertification by decades of indiscriminate felling of trees.