Rescuers recovered at least 115 bodies after floodwater swept through Mokwa, a market town in Nigeria's Niger State, an emergency official said on Friday. Many residents remained missing after hours of torrential rain late on Wednesday inundated neighbourhoods and destroyed homes.
Ibrahim Audu Husseini, a spokesperson for the Niger State Emergency Management Agency, told AFP that bodies were still being found downstream. He said the flood had carried people towards the River Niger and warned that the toll would continue to rise as teams worked in different locations.
The scale of the disaster continued to change after the event date. DW reported that local emergency services put the death toll above 150 on Saturday, May 31. That later figure superseded the 115 recoveries reported on May 30; it should not be read as information available at the start of Friday's search effort.
The flooding followed several hours of intense rain. Both Al Jazeera and DW reported that the collapse of a nearby dam worsened conditions, although the supplied evidence did not name the structure or provide technical findings about why it failed. More than 50 homes were swept away, according to DW, while Al Jazeera reported an emergency-services estimate that thousands of homes had been destroyed. The difference in scope was not explained in the supplied accounts.
Survivors described abrupt and devastating losses. Mohammed Tanko, a 29-year-old civil servant, said at least 15 people were lost from the home where he grew up and that the property was gone. Fisherman Danjuma Shaba said his house had collapsed and he was sleeping in a car park. Their accounts, reported by AFP and carried by Al Jazeera, illustrated the upheaval behind the changing official totals.
More than 3,000 people had been displaced, DW reported in its later update. President Bola Tinubu offered condolences and said federal agencies had been mobilised to support the state government's response. He said search-and-rescue work was continuing and that relief supplies and temporary shelter assistance were being deployed.
Mokwa lies about 220km west of Abuja and serves as an important link between traders from southern Nigeria and farmers in the north. Damage in the town therefore affected not only homes but a local centre for commerce and the movement of food and goods. The supplied reports did not quantify the wider economic impact.
The disaster came near the beginning of Nigeria's rainy season, which typically lasts about six months. The Nigerian Meteorological Agency had warned of possible flash flooding in 15 of the country's 36 states, including Niger State, between Wednesday and Friday. Al Jazeera's reporting noted that seasonal rains had been under way for only about a month in some areas.
Flooding recurs across Nigeria, with inadequate drainage increasing the danger during heavy rain. DW also identified houses built on waterways and waste dumped in drains and channels as factors that can worsen flooding. Those conditions describe broader vulnerability; the supplied evidence did not assign a specific share of the Mokwa destruction to any one factor.
The country had endured another severe flood year in 2024. Both reports cited figures of more than 1,200 deaths and 1.2 million displaced people across 31 states. DW said those floods also destroyed more than 1.4 million hectares of farmland. Al Jazeera separately recalled a September 2024 disaster in Maiduguri in which torrential rain and a dam collapse killed at least 30 people.
Scientists have warned that extreme weather patterns are becoming more frequent as the climate changes, Al Jazeera reported. Establishing the causes of a single flood requires a dedicated assessment, however, and the supplied evidence did not attribute the Mokwa rainfall directly to climate change.
As of the later Saturday update, the priority remained the search for victims and aid for displaced residents. The rising count between Friday and Saturday reflected the difficulty of assessing a fast-moving flood that had carried people and debris well beyond the town itself.
