Floods leave dozens dead, thousands displaced

Floods have swept through many villages in Kano State, northern Nigeria, killing dozens of people and rendering many thousands homeless, local officials said on Thursday.

Following two days of torrential rain over the weekend of 25-26 August, the Tiga and Challawa dams, fed by the Kano and Hadejia rivers, overflowed and swept through scores of downstream villages and farmlands, they said. The hardest hit are villages in Warawa, Wudil, Kumobotso and Dawakin-Kudu local government areas.

“Even though the Hadejia River Basin authorities had issued warnings of imminent flooding the previous week, the magnitude of what happened was beyond what the people expected,” Usman Aminu, an official of Kuchi local government council, told IRIN. “More than 30 people have died so far while more than 10,000 people who lost their homes are taking refuge in school buildings.”

The number of dead and displaced is expected to rise as the full impact of the disaster becomes clearer, local newspapers quoted residents as saying. Food security in the region is likely to be undermined since large swathes of farmland have been swamped, causing the loss of part of the year’s harvest.