The death toll from flooding that struck the town of Mokwa in central Nigeria on Wednesday evening has risen to at least 115, an emergency services spokesman told AFP on Friday.
"We have recovered 115 bodies so far, and we expect to recover more because the floods swept people into the Niger River," Ibrahim Husseini told AFP.
Earlier, Husseini Issa, operations director of the National Emergency Management Agency in Niger State, told reporters that "the death toll is about 88." The death toll on Friday morning had been 36.
Heavy rains on Wednesday evening swept away dozens of homes in the town of Mokwa, drowning many people.
Rescue teams continued searching for missing people on Friday.
Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, regularly experiences flooding during the rainy season, which runs from May to September.
Scientists say climate change is contributing to more extreme weather events.
Floods, typically caused by heavy rains and dilapidated infrastructure, cause devastation every year, killing hundreds.
In Nigeria, flooding is exacerbated by a lack of adequate drainage systems, the construction of homes in flood-prone areas, and the accumulation of waste in the drainage system.
The Meteorological Agency warned of the possibility of flash floods in 15 of Nigeria's 36 states between Wednesday and Friday.
In 2024, more than 1,200 people were killed and 1.2 million displaced in at least 31 of the country's 36 states during some of the worst floods the country has seen in decades, according to the Emergency Management Agency.
Faced with the increasing frequency of flooding, Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu last year called for increased relief resources and requested the installation of warning systems "to mitigate the impact of environmental disasters."
For its part, emergency services stressed the need for increased state support to address the scale of the damage and reduce human losses.
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