From last July to now, the rains have caused flooding that destroyed nearly 15,000 homes on the border between the two West African countries and destroyed large areas of crops.
Most of those affected sought refuge in schools, abandoned buildings, makeshift tents or with distant relatives to survive while leaving their belongings in their exodus, creating humanitarian hardship.
That year’s floods killed 300 Nigerians and, according to the National Emergency Management Agency, affected half a million people and injured more than 500 in 27 of the country’s 36 states and the capital.
Press media agree: the floods have caused severe damage in the states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa in northern Nigeria and in the regions of Maradi, Zinder, Tillaberi and Tahoua in Niger.
According to evaluations by specialized institutions, more than 100,000 Nigerians are suffering from the consequences of the recent floods in the Sahel region, where they are becoming more frequent and widespread as a suspected consequence of the worsening climate.
At least 75 people died this summer in Niger, which, like its neighbor, is also plagued by fundamentalist violence of an allegedly sectarian nature, the press reports with numerical accuracy.
The extreme nature behavior in the Sahel zone, where there is also an increase in desertification, is currently associated with the decline in the safety conditions of the individual.
Unstable rainfall patterns and severe droughts have deeply damaged food sources and livelihoods in Niger and Nigeria, leading to high levels of hunger.
Although some 6.3 million children under the age of five in the Sahel were expected to be malnourished in 2022, livelihood-destroying floods are likely to worsen the projected situation, at least in both countries.
It is estimated that 40 percent of the population in the northern Nigerian state of Yobe suffers from food insecurity, while flooded areas and lack of drinking water can trigger outbreaks of cholera, malaria or dengue fever.
Ilaria Manunza, director of the NGO Save the Children in Niger, said: “Families are overwhelmed by the severe flooding. Many of them have never seen such devastation from the rain before.”
Associated with food shortages, flooding also causes epidemiological problems such as the spread of disease and negative environmental impacts such as increased pollution levels.
United Nations experts believe it is likely that regions of Africa, including the Sahel, will experience an increase in the frequency, intensity and amount of heavy rainfall as a result of climate change.
If such an assessment is made, the above area will suffer changes in its habitat but also in its traditional models of coexistence, which will be forced to build other social structures on the ruins of the current ones, nullified by the environmental degradation.