At least 49 people have been killed and thousands displaced in Nigeria after heavy rains caused flooding in the northeast of the country, the National Emergency Management Authority (NEMA), said on Monday.
Three states in the northeast, Jigawa, Adamawa and Taraba, have been hit hard by floods, with 41,344 people displaced, said NEMA spokesperson Manzo Ezekiel.
In 2022, Nigeria experienced its worst flood in more than a decade which killed more than 600 people, displaced around 1.4 million and destroyed 440,000 hectares of farmland.
“We are just entering into the peak of the season, particularly in the northern part of the country and the situation is very dire,” Ezekiel told Reuters.
The floods have also destroyed farmlands affecting around 693 hectares of agricultural land. Nigeria is battling double-digit inflation which has been stoked by high food prices.
Heavy rains have added to problems in the farming sector where farmers are deserting their farms in the northeast due to repeated attacks by militants.
The government in this year’s flood outlook said 31 of the country’s 36 states were at risk of experiencing “high flood”.
“We also have information about the high tide in the upper countries of the River Niger before Nigeria. All of these are flowing towards Nigeria. We are beginning to see a manifestation of our predictions,” Ezekiel said.
The agency had in July warned of major floods in certain Local Government Areas of Rivers State.
Making this known in Port Harcourt during a workshop tagged ‘Downscaling of flood early warning strategies for early actions’, the director in charge of risk reduction at NEMA, Godwin Tepikor, had canvassed support from the Local Government authorities to mitigate the effects of the flood.
On his part, the Zonal director of the Agency, Babatunde Adebiyi, said that 13 local government areas have been identified, and the agency was working to prepare them for the coming flood.
Some of the high-risk LGAs identified include Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni, Degema, and Ahoada East and West among others.
The agency had also predicted that eight local government areas of Zamfara State would be affected by moderate flooding in the 2024 rainy season.
The agency’s Director-General in Zamfara, Zubaida Umar, who disclosed this listed the eight LGAs to include Bugundu, Gummi, Gusau, Bakura, Maradun Talata Mafara, Shinkafi, and Zurmi.
The Nigerian Hyrodological Services Agency (NIHSA) in the year 2024 Annual Flood Outlook, predicted that 31 states with 148 local government areas are to be within the high flood risk areas, while 35 states including FCT with 249 LGAs are considered to fall within the moderate flood risk areas, and the remaining 377 LGAs are forecasted for the low flood risk areas.