Nearly 200 people have died in flooding caused by heavy seasonal rains across 12 states in Nigeria, the country’s main relief agency said on Thursday.
The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said 199 people had lost their lives after the main Niger and Benue rivers burst their banks.
A national disaster has been declared in the central states of Kogi, where the two rivers meet, and Niger, plus Delta and Anambra in the south.
NEMA said in its latest update that “large-scale flooding” since late last month “impacted 826,403 people”. Of those, 286,119 had been made homeless.
Numbers were expected to rise and more rain is expected in the coming weeks, it added.
Shelter, food, medicine and other items such as mosquito nets were “priority needs”, the report said.
The flooding has not only devastated towns and villages along the rivers but also destroyed crops and killed livestock, said the secretary-general of the Nigerian Red Cross, Abubakar Kende.