At least 49 people have been killed and thousands displaced in Nigeria after heavy rains caused flooding in the northeast of the country, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has said.
Three states in the northeast, Jigawa, Adamawa and Taraba, have been hit hard by floods, with 41,344 people displaced, NEMA spokesperson Manzo Ezekiel said Monday.
In 2022, Nigeria experienced its worst flood in more than a decade, which killed more than 600 people, displaced around 1.4 million and destroyed 440,000 hectares (1.1 million acres) of farmland.
“We are just entering into the peak of the season, particularly in the northern part of the country, and the situation is very dire,” Ezekiel told Reuters.
The floods have also destroyed farmlands, affecting around 693 hectares (1,712 acres) of agricultural land. Nigeria is battling double-digit inflation, which has been stoked by high food prices.
Heavy rains have added to problems in the farming sector, where farmers are deserting their farms in the northeast due to repeated attacks by armed individuals.
Many officials remain worried and are bracing for more destruction as the rainy season is yet to peak.
“We have September, October to come. The rain is much more in September than in August, so only God knows what the state will be when we reach that time,” Haruna Mairiga of the Jigawa Emergency Management Agency told Al Jazeera.
According to Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris, reporting from Nigeria, the government says 110km (68 miles) of embankments have been constructed, but the flooding continues to claim lives and property, diverting scarce government resources meant for development.
The government said this year that 31 of the country’s 36 states were at risk of experiencing “high flood”.
“We also have information about the high tide in the upper countries of the River Niger before Nigeria,” Ezekiel said. “All of these are flowing towards Nigeria. We are beginning to see a manifestation of our predictions.”
