by Mohammed Bello Doka
When disaster strikes in Nigeria, federal response is supposed to follow human suffering, scale of destruction and urgency of need — not region, ethnicity or political geography. Yet within just two years of President Bola Tinubu’s administration, three major disasters in three states have produced three vastly different federal relief outcomes that raise uncomfortable questions about equity, priority and power in Nigeria’s national response.
The facts are clear, recent and undisputed.
On January 16, 2024, an explosion caused by illegally stored explosives ripped through Old Bodija in Ibadan, Oyo State. The blast damaged or destroyed about 318 buildings across roughly seven neighbourhoods, killed five people and injured 77 others. Hundreds of households were displaced. The Oyo State Government requested ₦100 billion in federal support for reconstruction. President Tinubu approved ₦50 billion in August 2024 — the largest single disaster intervention approved under his presidency. By November 2024, ₦30 billion had already been released through the Central Bank of Nigeria for reconstruction of Old Bodija and surrounding areas.
Move forward eight months.
In September 2024, catastrophic flooding followed the collapse of the Alau Dam, submerging large parts of Maiduguri, Borno State. This was not a neighbourhood disaster. It was a city-scale humanitarian emergency. Humanitarian agencies and the Borno State Government estimated that over 1 million people were affected, with 414,000–500,000 displaced and more than 70 percent of Maiduguri impacted. At least 150 deaths were reported. Entire communities, markets and homes were washed away. For this disaster — the largest human catastrophe among the three — the federal relief approved for Borno State was ₦3 billion.
Five months later, on February 14–15, 2026, a massive inferno tore through Singer (Singa) Market in Kano State, destroying over 1,000 shops and businesses and goods worth more than ₦5 billion. Thousands of traders lost their livelihoods overnight. In response, President Tinubu approved ₦5 billion in federal relief for affected traders.
Three disasters. Three regions. Three funding outcomes:
Oyo (South-West): ₦50 billion approved; ₦30 billion released immediately
Kano (North-West): ₦5 billion approved
Borno (North-East): ₦3 billion approved
No aggregation. No distortion. A direct comparison of like-for-like federal approvals.
Across the North-West and North-Central belt — Zamfara, Kaduna, Niger, Kebbi and Katsina — years of banditry, cattle rustling, village burnings and mass kidnappings have produced thousands of deaths, destroyed communities and displaced entire rural populations, yet federal response has remained overwhelmingly military rather than financial relief to victims. Repeated large-scale attacks in rural Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna and Niger have left villages razed and civilians killed or abducted, but there are no widely reported multi-billion federal compensation or reconstruction packages for affected communities comparable to disaster approvals elsewhere. Instead, intervention has centred on troop deployments, rescue operations and counter-bandit offensives across these APC-governed states (with Zamfara PDP but widely rumoured to be politically realigning). Compounding Northern frustration are persistent local claims and rumours that far greater sums are spent indirectly on negotiations, intelligence payments or security arrangements linked to bandit groups than on direct support for victims and destroyed communities — a perception that deepens the sense that those who suffer the violence receive far less attention than the violence itself.
And this is where the question becomes unavoidable.
Why did a disaster affecting hundreds of households in Oyo receive ₦50 billion, while a disaster affecting over one million people in Borno received ₦3 billion? Why did Kano’s economic catastrophe receive one-tenth of Oyo’s allocation? What objective national formula explains this disparity?
The political geography deepens the puzzle.
Both Borno and Kano are APC-governed states. Kano’s governor, Abba Kabir Yusuf, recently aligned politically with the ruling APC bloc at the federal level and publicly declared that his move was partly to secure greater federal patronage and benefits for Kano State. If political alignment with the centre determines federal generosity, Kano and Borno should logically sit closer to the front of the queue.
Yet the largest allocation flowed not to the North-East’s humanitarian catastrophe nor the North-West’s economic disaster, but to Oyo State — a PDP-governed state — located in the President’s home South-West region.
This is the contradiction that Northern political elites and influencers now struggle to explain.
Across Northern social media, the ₦5 billion Kano relief has been celebrated as proof of presidential compassion. Praise videos circulate. Graphics applaud federal generosity. Influencers hail commitment. But where was this chorus of approval when ₦50 billion was approved for Bodija months earlier? Did they not see it? Did they assume Northern audiences would not remember? Or is the expectation of disparity now so normalized that any Northern allocation — no matter how comparatively small — is treated as exceptional generosity?
These questions are uncomfortable precisely because they are empirical.
The largest human disaster received the smallest funding.
The smallest-scale disaster received the largest funding.
The North-East received the least.
The South-West received the most.
No rhetoric changes those facts.
Defenders argue that Bodija required urban reconstruction while Borno required humanitarian relief. But that explanation collapses under scrutiny. Reconstruction costs follow destruction scale. Maiduguri’s flooding destroyed entire districts, infrastructure, roads, schools and markets across a city affecting more than a million residents. If reconstruction logic applied consistently, Borno’s allocation should have exceeded Oyo’s many times over, not fallen to a fraction.
Others argue that Oyo requested more. But federal discretion determines approvals. Requests do not bind allocations. And Kano and Borno disasters were federal emergencies of national significance, not local incidents.
The deeper issue is perception — and what it signals about power.
When Northern disasters repeatedly receive smaller federal allocations than comparable or smaller Southern disasters, a narrative forms: that proximity to the political centre matters more than scale of suffering. That regional closeness to presidential power influences fiscal compassion. That some tragedies mobilize larger state response than others.
This perception is corrosive in a federation already strained by mistrust.
It also places Northern political leaders in a difficult moral position. If federal relief patterns appear uneven, can governors, senators and ministers convincingly defend them before their constituents? Can they explain why a million flood victims in Maiduguri received a fraction of what hundreds of households in Ibadan received? Can they justify the disparity as objective policy rather than political geography?
History has a way of replaying such moments. Public memory does not erase figures so stark: ₦50 billion, ₦5 billion, ₦3 billion. Future generations in Borno and Kano will inevitably ask why disasters of greater scale drew lesser national response. Political actors of today will be judged by how they confronted — or ignored — those questions.
This is not an argument that Oyo did not deserve support. Bodija’s victims needed reconstruction. The issue is proportionality and equity. National compassion must expand with suffering, not contract. Relief should rise with devastation, not vary with geography.
The three disasters of 2024–2026 have created a test case of federal fairness visible to every Nigerian. The numbers are public. The approvals are documented. The contrasts are stark. They invite scrutiny not because of rhetoric but because of arithmetic.
If the federation is to retain moral legitimacy across regions, its disaster response must be seen to treat citizens equally — whether in Ibadan, Kano or Maiduguri. Otherwise the question posed by these allocations will not fade.
It will deepen.
Do Northern lives matter less in Nigeria’s disaster calculus — or is there a transparent national standard that explains why Bodija received ₦50 billion while Maiduguri received ₦3 billion?
Until that question is answered convincingly, the figures themselves will continue to speak.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
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