Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said on Tuesday that half a million Nigerians have been affected by floods caused by heavy rains since the beginning of the year.
Twenty-three of the country’s 36 states are affected by seasonal flooding. Its northeastern states have been particularly hard-hit this year. Emergency services were providing aid and Buhari was receiving regular updates on the floods. The floods have affected more than 500,000 Nigerians this year.
“The destructive floods have displaced 73,379 people,” caused more than 100 casualties, and injured about another 270 people, Buhari said in a statement.
In Borno state’s capital Maiduguri, which is the epicentre of the country’s more than decade-long Islamist insurgency, people displaced by the conflict have seen their farms and homes destroyed by flooding.
“For the past 20 years, we haven’t experienced such heavy floods. But this year, they have destroyed our farms, our homes and even taken the lives of some of us,” Maiduguri resident Auwal Abale told AFP.
“Yesterday we found a corpse floating on the water surface.”
Nigeria’s tumultuous 13-year Islamist war in the northeast has killed more than 40,000. Due to the conflict more than two million have been displaced from their homes, mostly in Borno State.
The rainy season which runs from May to September causes flooding on a regular basis in the country. Nigeria suffered disastrous floods across most of its states a decade ago. This saw hundreds die and more than two million were left homeless.
