ABUJA: Nigeria’s worst flooding in at least half a century has killed 363 people since the start of July and displaced 2.1 million people, an emergency agency said yesterday.
Nigeria often suffers seasonal flash floods after heavy tropical rain, but the sheer scale of the devastation this year has shocked people and images of towns and cities under water have filled TV screens.
President Goodluck Jonathan last month called the flooding, which has submerged parts of the south, a “national disaster” but said it would not trigger a
food crisis.
The National Emergency Management Agency said in a statement yesterday that 7.7 million people had been affected by the flooding between July 1 and October 31.
It said 363 people had been killed and 18,282 people injured.
Flooding in the oil rich Niger Delta, where Africa’s third longest river flows into the Atlantic ocean, has disrupted oil production to the tune of around 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) — more than a fifth of Nigeria’s output — according to the Department of Petroleum Resources. REUTERS
