Widespread flooding has killed more than 500 people in Nigeria, left around 90,000 homes under water and blocked food and fuel supplies, two government ministries said on Friday.
The floods have hit 27 of Nigeria’s 36 states and impacted around 1.4 million people, the ministries for humanitarian affairs and for disaster management said in an online posting.
Nigerian authorities said flooding caused by heavier than usual rains had been building since early summer and intensified after water releases from the Lagdo dam in neighbouring Cameroon.
“The scale of the disaster …is colossal,” Mustapha Habib Ahmed, director general of the National Emergency Management Agency, added in a statement.
On Thursday, drone footage in Lokoja – which sits in the north-central Kogi state at the confluence of the Niger and Benue rivers and has suffered weeks of flooding – showed dozens of submerged homes and businesses.
Reuters
