While on a Channels TV programme on Tuesday, Nentawe Yilwatda, Nigeria’s Minister for Humanitarian Affairs, claimed stampedes were not unique to Nigeria.
Yilwatda then went on to say that a similar incident had been recorded in the United States of America in the past.
“Stampedes have taken place in more developed countries than Nigeria,” the minister stated during the programme.
“If you recall, Hurricane Katrina in the US, when they had food distribution because of poor organisation, they had a stampede.
“Also, in the school food distribution in Texas, in the US, the same thing happened. It has happened in several countries that are more developed than Nigeria where you have poor organisation.”
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FIJ found that stampedes did not occur as a result of food distribution in the two US examples cited by the minister.
After the people of New Orleans, Louisiana, suffered enormous devastation as a result of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, what followed was massive looting of stores and violence. However, stampedes of any kind (due to poor organisation) were not recorded before and after the natural disaster hit the city.
As a matter of fact, between 80 and 90 per cent of the residents of New Orleans had already been evacuated before the hurricane struck.
For Texas, the only deadly stampede FIJ could find happened during an Astroworld music festival in Houston, the state’s biggest city.
Of the eight people who died in the unfortunate incident that happened in November 2021, seven were between the ages of 14 and 27.
More importantly, the stampede did not occur during a food distribution exercise.
In 2024, at least 84 Nigerian lives were lost at events that were originally meant to help the poor and put smiles, temporary or not, on people’s faces.
In December alone, about 70 Nigerians died in stampedes that happened during food and gift distribution events in Oyo, Anambra and the Federal Capital Territory.
Before that period, no fewer than 17 Nigerians had also died in Lagos, Nasarawa and Bauchi while scampering for food and other gifts at almsgiving and intervention exercises.
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