At least 117 people have been confirmed dead in one of Nigeria’s worst flooding disasters after torrential rains and a suspected dam collapse sent a wall of water crashing through a bustling market town while residents slept.
The death toll in Niger State’s catastrophic flooding has risen dramatically from initial reports of just 21 dead, with emergency officials warning the final figure could climb even higher as rescue teams continue pulling bodies from the muddy waters.
Shocking videos posted on social media show the scale of devastation, with a TANKER floating through the submerged streets of Mokwa as brown floodwaters swallow entire neighborhoods, leaving only rooftops visible above the torrents.
‘MORE BODIES EVERY HOUR’
In a grim update this afternoon, emergency spokesman Ibrahim Audu Husseini revealed the rapidly escalating death toll: “More bodies have just been brought and are yet to be counted, but we have at least 111 confirmed already.
Just hours later, that figure had climbed to 117 as “We have so far recovered 115 bodies and more are expected to be recovered because the flood came from far distance and washed people into the River Niger. Downstream, bodies are still being recovered”.
The nightmare began late Wednesday night when the floods struck the Kpege neighborhood of Mokwa early Thursday, “when residents were mostly asleep.
DAM COLLAPSE DISASTER
Media reports suggest a dam collapse in a nearby town dramatically worsened the situation, turning what might have been manageable flooding into a catastrophe.
Ibrahim Hussaini, head of the Niger State Emergency Management Agency, said some 3,000 houses were submerged in two communities in the north-central state.
The vital market town of Mokwa, located 140 miles west of capital Abuja, serves as a crucial trading hub where southern merchants buy produce from northern farmers.
‘I LOST 15 PEOPLE’
Survivors described scenes of unimaginable horror as the waters swept through their communities.
Mohammed Tanko, 29, a civil servant, revealed his devastating losses: “he lost at least 15 people from the house he grew up in. ‘The property [is] gone. We lost everything,'”.
Fisherman Danjuma Shaba, 35, is now sleeping in a car park after the floods destroyed everything: “I don’t have a house to sleep in. My house has already collapsed”.
Shopkeeper Umar Jamil described the terrifying moments as the water struck: “We had to knock on some doors, but before people could escape, the flood had already caught up. We have seen many bodies floating on the water, but we couldn’t help”.
WORST YET TO COME
In a chilling warning, officials say this disaster has struck before Nigeria’s rainy season even reaches its peak.
The most concerning thing about these floods is ‘this isn’t even the peak of the rainy season,'” said Idris. In some states, the rains have only been there for a month and yet we’re seeing this.
The Nigerian Meteorological Agency has issued urgent warnings of possible flash floods in 15 of Nigeria’s 36 states between Wednesday and Friday.
CLIMATE CHAOS
This marks the latest in a series of devastating floods to hit Nigeria in recent years:
- September 2024: torrential rains and a dam collapse in Nigeria’s northeastern Maiduguri caused severe flooding, leaving at least 30 people dead and displacing millions
- 2022: Nigeria experienced its worst wave of floods in more than a decade which killed more than 600 people, displaced around 1.4 million and destroyed 440,000 hectares of farmland
- Last year alone: weeks of flooding across the region caused over 200 deaths and displaced more than 386,000 people
INFRASTRUCTURE CRISIS
Local officials are pointing fingers at decades of neglect that turned heavy rains into a death trap.
The chairman of Mokwa local government area, Jibril Muregi, suggested that poor infrastructure worsened the impact of the flood. He appealed to the government to start “long overdue” construction of waterways in Mokwa under a climate resilience project.
Angry residents say authorities ignored clear warning signs. There have been signs for a long time that a flood might occur here,” Mr. Jamil, 32, said. You can only imagine the magnitude of the pain inflicted on our people by this flood”.
As darkness falls on Mokwa tonight, rescue teams continue their desperate search for survivors and bodies in the murky waters.
We expect the toll to rise considerably because there are different rescuers at different locations,” Husseini said.
The Niger state government described the incident as “saddening, heartbreaking and pathetic” as the true scale of one of Nigeria’s worst natural disasters continues to unfold.
With Nigeria’s six-month rainy season only just beginning, terrified residents across the flood-prone nation are asking: where will disaster strike next?
