Flash foods that ripped through parts of central Nigeria’s state of Niger have killed at 115 people, an emergency services official said on Friday, saying the toll is expected to rise.
“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,” Ibrahim Audu Husseini, head of the Niger State Emergency Management Agency said.
“So, the toll keeps rising”.
The death toll is a sharp rise from Thursday’s figure of 21 people, Husseini said, adding that some 3,000 houses were submerged in two communities in the north-central state.
Nigeria is prone to flooding during the rainy season, which began in April.
In 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.
The flooding incident in Niger state occurred on Wednesday night and continued into Thursday morning, Hussaini said, with a number of people still in the water.
