• Source:JND
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At least 117 people have been confirmed dead and over a dozen missing after floods submerged Mokwa, a market town in Nigeria's Niger State, on Thursday, news agency AP reported citing an official. Husseini Isah, head of the operations office in Minna, capital of Niger State, said that many more are still at risk, with rescue efforts underway on Friday.

Earlier reports said at least 21 died. "The number keeps rising," Isah told The Associated Press. "But at the last count, 117 bodies have been recovered."

The death toll is a sharp rise from Thursday's figure of 21 people, Ibrahim Hussaini, head of the Niger State Emergency Management Agency, said, adding that some 3,000 houses were submerged in two communities in the north-central state.

Earlier on Thursday, the same official had put the death toll at 21 and said some 50 houses were submerged in two communities in the state.

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The floods were triggered by torrential rains that lasted several hours. According to local reports quoting residents and local government officials, a dam collapse in a nearby town worsened the situation.

Mokwa is a major meeting point for traders from the south and food growers in the north of the country. In a similar occurrence last September, torrential rains and a dam collapse in Nigeria's northeastern Maiduguri caused severe flooding, leaving at least 30 people dead and displacing millions, worsening the humanitarian crisis caused by the Boko Haram insurgency.

Nigeria floods

Nigeria often faces seasonal floods, particularly impacting communities along the banks of the Niger and Benue Rivers. The region is prone to flooding during the rainy season, which began in April. In 2022, Nigeria experienced its worst wave of floods in more than a decade which killed more than 600 people, displaced around 1.4 million and destroyed 440,000 hectares of farmland. The flooding incident in Niger state occurred on Wednesday night and continued into Thursday morning, Hussaini said, with a number of people still in the water. 

(With inputs from PTI And Reuters)