At least 3,018 displaced and 265 homes razed by the floods in central Nigeria as more rains are anticipated. Over 150 have been killed and thousands left homeless after floods ravaged central Nigeria, local officials said, as rescue teams keep on retrieving bodies and searching for missing persons.
The rural town of Mokwa in Niger State was hit by the flood after torrential rains starting late on Wednesday spilled over into Thursday.
The death toll has increased to 151 after additional bodies were retrieved almost 10km (6 miles) from Mokwa, according to the Niger State Emergency Management Agency (NSEMA) spokesman Ibrahim Audu Husseini on Saturday.
The death toll is in reality likely to be higher, said Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris, reporting from Mokwa. The usual thing is when an official tells you 151 are dead or missing, you are likely to multiply that by two, three or four,” said Idris.
A minimum of 3,018 individuals have been displaced, with 265 homes being “completely destroyed” in the floods, he explained, noting that several victims were thought to have been washed downstream along the Niger River, warning that the death toll could yet increase.
President Bola Tinubu overnight offered his condolences and stated that search-and-rescue efforts were underway with assistance from Nigeria’s security forces.
Relief supplies and shelter assistance on a temporary basis are being distributed without any delay,” he posted on social media. We lost everything, the families. We don’t have anywhere else to go, the property has gone,” said Mohammed Tanko, a resident. “We lost at least 15 from this house.”
The somber chore of retrieving bodies and whatever the residents and victims of this tragedy can is what’s been happening since we got here in the early afternoon,” Idris told me, standing outside of a rundown house as kids and adults dig up belongings and bodies.
“When we came here, the locals told us that when the flood water began coming in Mokwa, more bodies were coming in from more villages up the stream and so this is where houses used to be. Some homes, over 300 of them, were swept away or totally destroyed by flood waters,” said Idris, while clothes and other belongings of residents lay scattered in heaps on the ground.
Locals think that the floods could have been precipitated by “a bigger problem upstream, maybe a dam burst, but up to now officials are not confirming that”, said Idris. “But the amount of water that came into this community is so much that nobody had any time to prepare to evacuate.”
