Nigeria is grappling with its worst flooding in a decade, with more than 300 people killed in 2022, including at least 20 this week as authorities said the situation was “out of our control”.
Flooding in 27 of Nigeria’s 36 states and the capital has affected half a million people, including 100,000 displaced and more than 500 injured, Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency said.
The disaster has also destroyed thousands of hectares of farmland and heightened fears of a food disruption in Africa’s most populous country.
Since 2012 “this [the flood-related deaths] is the highest we’ve ever had,” said Manzo Ezekiel, a spokesman for the Civil Protection Agency.
Nigeria experiences flooding every year, often as a result of non-implementation of environmental policies and inadequate infrastructure. Authorities blame this year’s flooding on overflowing water from local rivers, unusual rainfall and the release of excess water from the Lagdo Dam in the northern region of neighboring Cameroon.
The Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency forecast more flooding in 2022 than last year due to “excessive rainfall and contributions from external rivers” like the dam in Cameroon.
On Monday, Nigeria’s civil protection agency warned more than a dozen states of “serious consequences” in the coming weeks when two of the country’s hydroelectric dams began to overflow.
“I would like to advise all frontline governments to remove communities threatened by flooding, find safe higher grounds for people to evacuate, and stock up adequately on food and other items,” said Nigeria’s national emergency management agency chief Mustapha Habib Ahmed .
Flooding in northwest Jigawa state killed more than 20 people last week, Yusuf Sani Babura, head of the Jigawa state disaster management agency, told AP. The state has recorded 91 deaths from flooding this year — more than any other state in the country.
“We are facing devastating floods that are beyond our control,” Babura said. “We did our best and couldn’t stop it.”
The floods have also destroyed crops, mainly in Nigeria’s northern region, which produces much of what the country eats, raising concerns that they may be threatening food supplies already threatened by armed conflict in the north-west and central regions of the country has been interrupted.
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In Benue state, Aondongu Kwagh-bee said he recently visited his rice farm and found that a heavy downpour “wiped everything away”.
“There’s nothing at the moment. Only sand was filled in and the rice was washed away,” said the 30-year-old.
Akintunde Babatunde, an Abuja-based climate analyst, said the main cause of Nigeria’s annual flooding problem is poor infrastructure of roads, drainage and waste disposal.
“Unusual rainfall is evidence of the changing climate,” he said.