ABUJA, 31 Aug: Weeks of flooding have killed nearly 200 people in Nigeria and washed away homes and farmlands, the country\u2019s disaster management agency said, further threatening food supplies, especially in the hard-hit northern region.
\nThe floods blamed on poor infrastructure and badly maintained dams have killed 185 people and displaced 208,000 in 28 of Nigeria\u2019s 36 states, the National Emergency Management Agency said in an update Friday, triggering frantic efforts to evacuate hundreds of thousands to makeshift shelters.
\nNigeria records flooding every year mostly as a result of failure to follow environmental guidelines and inadequate infrastructure. The worst floods the country has seen in a decade were in 2022 when more than 600 people were killed and over 1 million displaced.
\nHowever, unlike in 2022 when the floods were blamed on heavier rainfall, the Nigerian Meteoro-logical Agency predicted delayed or normal rains in most parts of the country this year and said the current floods were more a result of human activities.
\n\u201cWhat we are doing is causing this climate change so there is a shift from the normal,\u201d said Ibrahim Wasiu Adeniyi, head of the central forecasting unit. \u201cWe have some who dump refuse indiscriminately, some build houses without approvals along the waterways,\u201d he added.
\nThe Nigeria disaster response agency warned the flooding could get worse in the coming weeks as the flood waters flow downwards to the central and southern states.
\n\u201cPeople (in flood-prone areas) need to evacuate now \u2026 because we don\u2019t have time any longer,\u201d its spokesperson, Manzo Ezekiel, said.
\nIn Jigawa, the worst-hit state, which has recorded 37 deaths, the impact of the floods has been \u201cdevas-tating\u201d and authorities are converting public buildings and schools as shelters for those displaced, according to Nura Abdullahi, head of emergency services in the state.
\nThe floods have so far destroyed 107,000 hectares of farmland, especially in northern states, among the most affected and where most of Nigeria\u2019s harvests come from.
\nMany farmers in the region are already unable to farm as much as they would like either because of decreasing inputs as families struggle amid Nigeria\u2019s economic hardship or as a result of violent attacks that have forced them to flee. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ABUJA, 31 Aug: Weeks of flooding have killed nearly 200 people in Nigeria and washed away homes and farmlands, the country\u2019s disaster management agency said, further threatening food supplies, especially in the hard-hit northern region. The floods blamed on poor infrastructure and badly maintained dams have killed 185 people and displaced 208,000 in 28 of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-247550","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}