Floods kill at the very least 111 as northern Nigeria battles local weather change, dry spells and heavy rainfall

Torrents of predawn rain unleashed flooding that killed at the very least 111 folks in a market city the place northern Nigerian farmers promote their wares to merchants from the south, officers mentioned Friday, predicting the dying toll would develop.

The Nigerian Hydrological Providers Company didn’t instantly say how a lot rain fell after midnight Thursday within the city of Mokwa within the state of Niger greater than 180 miles west of Abuja, the capital of Africa’s most populous nation.

Communities in northern Nigeria have been experiencing extended dry spells worsened by local weather change and extreme rainfall that results in extreme flooding through the temporary moist season.

In movies and images on social media, floodwaters coated neighborhoods and houses have been submerged, with their roofs barely seen above the brown coloured waters. Waist-deep in water, residents tried to salvage what they might, or rescue others.

“We misplaced many lives, and the properties, our farm produce. People who have their storage have misplaced it,” Kazeem Muhammed, a Mokwa resident, mentioned.

Moreover the 111 confirmed lifeless, “extra our bodies have simply been introduced and are but to be counted,” Niger state emergency company spokesman IIbrahim Audu Husseini informed The Related Press by phone Friday afternoon.

Mokwa, practically 380 kilometers (236 miles) west of Abuja, is a significant assembly level the place merchants from the south purchase beans, onions and different meals from farmers within the north.

Mokwa neighborhood chief Aliki Musa informed the AP the villagers should not used to such flooding. “The water is like non secular water which used to come back however it’s seasonal,” mentioned Musa. “It may possibly come now (and) it would attain one other twenty years earlier than coming once more.”

The chairman of the Mokwa native authorities space, Jibril Muregi, informed native information web site Premium Occasions that development of flood-control works was lengthy overdue.

“This essential infrastructure is crucial to mitigating future flood dangers and defending lives and property,” he mentioned.

In September, torrential rains and a dam collapse within the northeastern metropolis of Maiduguri prompted extreme flooding that left at the very least 30 folks lifeless and displaced hundreds of thousands, worsening the humanitarian disaster attributable to the Boko Haram insurgency.