More than 300 people will die from Nigeria’s worst floods in a decade in 2022, with at least 20 of those fatalities occurring this week, according to the authorities, who claim that they have no control over the situation.
The floods across 27 of Nigeria’s 36 states, as well as the nation’s capital, have affected 500,000 people, including 100,000 displaced people and more than 500 injured individuals, according to the country’s National Emergency Management Agency.
Fears of a disruption in the food supply in Africa’s most populous country have increased as a result of the disaster’s destruction of thousands of hectares of crops.
According to Manzo Ezekiel, a representative for the disaster management organization, “this [the number of deaths connected to floods]is the highest we ever had” since 2012.
Every year, flooding occurs in Nigeria, frequently as a result of a lack of adherence to environmental regulations and poor infrastructure. The floods this year, according to the authorities, are the result of local rivers overflowing, unusually heavy rains, and the release of extra water from the Lagdo dam in neighboring Cameroon’s northern area.
foreign flows,” like the dam in Cameroon, the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency forecast that floods will be worse in 2022 than they were in 2017.
As two of the nation’s dams began to overflow on Monday, the disaster management organization of Nigeria warned more than a dozen states of “severe implications” in the coming weeks.
According to Mustapha Habib Ahmed, the director of Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency, “I want to advise all the governments of the frontline states to move away communities at risk of inundation, identify safe higher grounds for evacuation of persons, and prepare adequate stockpiles of food and non-food items.”
According to Yusuf Sani Babura, director of the Jigawa State Emergency Management Agency, more than 20 persons were killed by floods in the north-western Jigawa state in the previous week. More than any other state in the nation, the state has reported 91 deaths related to flooding this year.
Babura stated that the terrible floods were out of his control. We made every effort to halt it, but we were unable. Concerns have been raised that the floods could further disrupt food supply already affected by armed strife in the country’s north-west and central areas due to the destruction of crops, especially in Nigeria’s northern region, which produces majority of what the country consumes.
Aondongu Kwagh-bee of the Benue state claimed that when he recently went to check on his rice plantation, he found that a significant downpour had “wiped away everything.”
There is currently nothing there. The rice washed away, and it was only filled with sand, the 30-year-old stated.
The poor infrastructure of Nigeria’s roadways, drainage, and garbage disposal, according to climate analyst Akintunde Babatunde of Abuja, is the biggest contributor to the country’s annual flooding crisis.
He claimed that unusual rainfall was proof of a changing climate.
