This has forced women and children to trek into neighbouring Cameroon to meet their basic needs.
Inside Kirawa, a border community in Gwoza Local Government Area of Borno State, residents who returned after months of displacement caused by Boko Haram attacks are now grappling with another daily struggle — the lack of potable water.
This has forced women and children to trek into neighbouring Cameroon to meet their basic needs.
Kirawa, located about 128 kilometres from Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, lies in Borno South and shares a border with Cameroon’s Far North region.
The town was badly affected by Boko Haram attacks in August and October 2025, which destroyed homes, livelihoods and public infrastructure, displacing thousands of residents.
Although relative calm has returned to the area, residents say the absence of basic amenities, particularly water, roads and healthcare facilities, has worsened living conditions, raising concerns about the failure of the state government to fulfil promises made after the attacks.
In interviews with PUNCH, residents said assurances by Governor Babagana Zulum to provide water facilities, hospitals, roads and other forms of support were among the reasons many families decided to return to Kirawa after fleeing to Cameroon during the insurgent attacks.
On Saturday, August 9, 2025, Boko Haram insurgents launched an attack on the community, destroying properties and abducting a teenage girl, Aisha Mohammed Aja, who remains in captivity.
The terrorists returned again on Thursday night, October 2, killing two residents and triggering another mass displacement, with thousands fleeing to Cameroonian border towns where they reportedly slept in streets, mosques, markets and schools.
Following the October attack, Governor Zulum visited Kirawa on Friday, October 3, where he sympathised with residents and assured them of enhanced security and the provision of key infrastructure, including water facilities, hospitals and roads.
Four months after the visit, however, residents say those promises remain unfulfilled, with the lack of potable water emerging as the most pressing concern.
Investigations reveal that children aged between six and 18, as well as women, now make daily trips across the Nigeria–Cameroon border to fetch water. Residents said the journey is usually made in groups as early as 5:30am and again around 4:30pm, with wheelbarrows pushed over long distances to a location known as Abuja Cameroon, where a functional tap water facility is located.
The water point, they explained, is situated towards the left-hand turn immediately after crossing from the Nigerian side of the border.
One of the women in the community, Hadiza Audu, described the humiliation and hardship that often accompany the daily trips.
“Sometimes, the people yell at us embarrassingly taunting us and our government.”
Residents fear the situation may worsen as schools prepare to resume, warning that children who must combine domestic chores with long-distance water trips could suffer academically.
“But some teachers are also not left out in the water crisis anyway. You won’t have to punish a child for coming late after going through the stress of fetching water, when yourself as a teacher suffered the same fate,” Mustapha Ahmed, a resident, said jokingly.
Isah Lawan son of th Village head, confirmed that crossing into Cameroon to fetch water has become routine for residents.
“After Cameroonian security operatives left, and the Nigerian Security took over during the peak of the attack late last year, there has been relative peace. However, the promises the governor made concerning the provision of water and the construction of hospital when he came to address us is yet to be fulfilled.
“We don’t know what the plan is, but ever since the the promise, we have not seen anything.
“But to say the truth, to get water, we suffer a lot. We go as far as Cameroon to get water for our basic use with a wheelbarrow. We do this every day,” Lawan stressed.
He urged the state government to urgently fulfil its commitments, particularly to families whose houses and shops were destroyed during the insurgent attacks, warning that without swift intervention, the hardship faced by returnees could deepen.