At least 111 people were confirmed dead in central Nigeria on Friday after floods submerged the market town of Mokwa in the country’s Niger State following torrential rains, officials said.
The heavy rains lasted for several hours Thursday, and media reports quoting local government officials said a dam collapse in a nearby town had worsened the situation. The flooding displaced large amounts of people, the reports said.
Rescuers continued to find more bodies into the afternoon Friday. Earlier reports said 88 people had died, but then at least 23 more bodies were found, Niger State emergency agency spokesman IIbrahim Audu Husseinit told The Associated Press in the afternoon.
That brought the toll to 111, but that could go higher as the search continued.
“More bodies have just been brought and are yet to be counted, but we have at least 111 confirmed already,” Husseini told AP by telephone.
Mokwa, about 220 kilometers (140 miles) west of Abuja, is a major meeting point where traders from the south buy food from growers in the north.
In a similar occurrence last September, torrential rains and a dam collapse in Nigeria’s northeastern Maiduguri caused severe flooding, leaving at least 30 people dead and displacing millions, worsening the humanitarian crisis caused by the Boko Haram insurgency.
Nigeria often faces seasonal floods, particularly impacting communities such as Mokwa along the banks of the Niger and Benue Rivers. Communities in the far north of the country, which experience prolonged dry spells worsened by climate change, also see excessive rainfall that leads to severe flooding during their brief wet season.
In videos and photos shared on social media platforms, floodwaters cover neighborhoods where homes are fully or partially submerged, with rooftops barely visible above the brown currents. Residents are also seen waist-deep in water, appearing to salvage what they can carry or rescue others.
The chairman of Mokwa local government area, Jibril Muregi, suggested that poor infrastructure worsened the impact of the flood. He appealed to the government to start “long overdue” construction of waterways in Mokwa under a climate resilience project.