Death toll from floods in Nigeria rises above 372 – Official
ABUJA, Nigeria (The Informant247) – Flooding in Nigeria in the past eight months killed more than 372 people, authorities said on Monday, adding that the deaths were recorded in 33 states including the nation’s capital city, Abuja.
Flooding has wrought widespread devastation in northern and southern states in recent weeks, washing away thousands of houses.
“In the last eight months, floods in Nigeria; mostly flash floods, have inundated 33 out of 36 states and FCT, affected over 508,000 persons, leading to about 372 deaths, 277 injured persons, destruction of about 37,633 houses, loss of huge numbers of livestock and several farmlands have been submerged. These have been accompanied by other derivative disasters,” Director-General of the country’s National Emergency Management Agency, Mustapha Habib Ahmed, told reporters.
He said the states mostly affected were Adamawa, Jigawa, Taraba, Kano, Bauchi, Niger, Anambra and Ebonyi.
He said the current trends in hazards identification, risk mapping and actual disasters had shown increasing instances of structural collapses, fuel tanker explosions, other road crashes and fire outbreaks which were either isolated disasters or derivative disasters in the raining seasons mostly characterized by floods.
He said his agency had keyed into proactive and predictive disaster risk management in line with best practices “hence the effort at new acquisitions will close existing gaps and meet the current operational cum tactical challenges faced by actors responding to emergencies in the field”.
