Nigeria Floods: Over 100 Dead and Counting, Urgent Rescues Underway

At least 115 people have been killed after torrential flooding swamped the market town of Mokwa in Nigeria’s northcentral Niger State, destroying thousands of homes, according to an emergency services official, in a region ravaged by deadly storms every year.

Head of the operations office in Minna, capital of Niger State, Husseini Isah, stated on Friday that many people were still in jeopardy while rescue efforts continue.

Since the water arrived from a great distance and carried individuals into the River Niger, we have retrieved 115 bodies so far, and more are anticipated. Bodies are still being retrieved downstream," Ibrahim Audu Husseini, a spokesman for the Niger State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA), told the AFP news agency. "So, the number keeps going up."

Torrential rains battered Mokwa late on Wednesday and lasted for several hours, washing away dozens of homes, with many residents still missing. A dam collapse in a nearby town caused the situation to rapidly deteriorate.

It is difficult to say how well-placed rescue efforts are to salvage people “because every rainy season we continue to see things like this,” said Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris, reporting from Abuja.

“Warnings have been put out by authorities for people exposed or communities living along river banks to move to higher ground, especially when the rains start to peak, but every year we continue to see more and more lives and property damaged because of rainfall,” said Idris.

“In certain areas, proper drainage isn’t there … and most of these disasters take officials of emergency management agencies in various states by surprise even though there has been consistent flooding over the past three years,” said Idris. As a result, “a lot of people don’t believe it will be any different” this time around.

Mokwa is a key meeting and transit point for traders from the south and food growers in the north of the country.

In the town, Mohammed Tanko, 29, a civil servant, told reporters that he lost at least 15 people from the house he grew up in.

“The property [is] gone. We lost everything,” Tanko said.

For fisherman Danjuma Shaba, 35, the floods destroyed his house, forcing him to sleep in a car park.

“I don’t have a house to sleep in. My house has already collapsed,” Shaba told the AFP news agency.

As Nigeria’s rainy season begins, typically lasting for six months, the Nigerian Meteorological Agency has warned of possible flash floods in 15 of Nigeria’s 36 states, including Niger State, between Wednesday and Friday.

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.”

However, experts have cautioned that the repercussions of climate change are already being seen, as extreme weather patterns are becoming more frequent.


The high rainfall causes challenges for Nigeria every year as it ruins infrastructure and is further aggravated by inadequate drainage.


At least 30 people were killed and millions were displaced in September 2024 when major floods occurred in the northeastern city of Maiduguri due to heavy rains and a dam failure.

The National Emergency Management Agency reports that last year's floods were among the worst in decades, killing over 1,200 people and displacing 1.2 million in at least 31 of the 36 states.