At least 115 people have been killed after heavy flooding submerged the market town of Mokwa in Nigeria’s northcentral Niger State, destroying thousands of homes, according to an emergency services official, in a country beset by deadly storms every year.
Head of the operations office in Minna, capital of Niger State, Husseini Isah, said on Friday that many people were still in peril as rescue efforts continue.
“We have so far recovered 115 bodies and more are expected to be recovered because the flood came from far distance and washed people into the River Niger. Downstream, bodies are still being recovered,” a Niger State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) spokesman, Ibrahim Audu Husseini, told the AFP news agency. “So, the toll keeps rising.”
Torrential rains battered Mokwa late on Wednesday and lasted for several hours, washing away dozens of homes, with many residents still missing. A dam collapse in a nearby town caused the situation to rapidly deteriorate.
It is difficult to say how well-placed rescue efforts are to salvage people “because every rainy season we continue to see things like this,” said Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris, reporting from Abuja.
“Warnings have been put out by authorities for people exposed or communities living along river banks to move to higher ground, especially when the rains start to peak, but every year we continue to see more and more lives and property damaged because of rainfall,” said Idris.
“In certain areas, proper drainage isn’t there … and most of these disasters take officials of emergency management agencies in various states by surprise even though there has been consistent flooding over the past three years,” said Idris. As a result, “a lot of people don’t believe it will be any different” this time around.
Mokwa is a key meeting and transit point for traders from the south and food growers in the north of the country.
In the town, Mohammed Tanko, 29, a civil servant, told reporters that he lost at least 15 people from the house he grew up in.
“The property [is] gone. We lost everything,” Tanko said.
For fisherman Danjuma Shaba, 35, the floods destroyed his house, forcing him to sleep in a car park.
“I don’t have a house to sleep in. My house has already collapsed,” Shaba told the AFP news agency.
As Nigeria’s rainy season begins, typically lasting for six months, the Nigerian Meteorological Agency has warned of possible flash floods in 15 of Nigeria’s 36 states, including Niger State, between Wednesday and Friday.
The most concerning thing about these floods is “this isn’t even the peak of the rainy season,” said Idris. “In some states, the rains have only been there for a month and yet we’re seeing this.”
However, scientists have warned that the effects of climate change are already being felt, as extreme weather patterns are becoming more frequent.
The heavy rainfall causes problems for Nigeria every year as it destroys infrastructure and is further exacerbated by inadequate drainage.
In September 2024, torrential rains and a dam collapse in the northeastern Maiduguri city caused severe flooding, killing at least 30 people and displacing millions.
Last year, more than 1,200 people were killed and 1.2 million displaced in at least 31 out of 36 states, in one of the country’s worst floods in decades, according to the National Emergency Management Agency.
