The results increased to 115 dead, the rescuers fear more victims – Liberation

At least 115 people died in recent floods that touched Center of Nigeria where the rescuers fear that the victims’ assessment is increasing « Considerably ». The previous balance sheets had reported 36, then 88 dead.

The spokesperson for the Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) Ibrahim Audu Husseini had previously said « As the balance sheet increases considerably because there are rescuers deployed in different places ». At this hour, teams of rescuers continue to try to find disappeared people after torrential rains that won dozens of houses on Wednesday evening in the city of Mokwa, causing many drownings. Residents also search the rubble of the buildings collapsed in the hope of finding relatives who have been missing since Wednesday evening, noted an AFP journalist.

The floods, generally caused by heavy rain and insufficient and poor infrastructure, are wreaking havoc every year, killing hundreds of people. In Nigeria, the floods are aggravated by inadequate drainage, the construction of houses in flood zones and the deposit of waste in the sanitation circuits. In 2024, more than 1,200 people were killed and 1.2 million displaced in at least 31 of the 36 states in Nigeria, at one of the worst floods in the country for decades, according to SEMA. Two years earlier, more than 500 people had lost their lives and 1.4 million had been moved.

Faced with the resurgence of the floods, the Nigerian president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, had called last year to a strengthening of the means allocated to the emergency services and asked for the establishment of alerts « To alleviate the impact of environmental disasters ». For their part, the emergency services emphasize the need for increased state support to deal with the extent of the damage and limit human losses.