Adamu Yusuf was preparing to go to the Mokwa market when he heard his neighbour shouting - floodwaters were sweeping through the Nigerian town.

Water had been building up for days last week behind an abandoned railway track that runs along the edge of the town, residents told AFP.

It was not the first time heavy rains had accumulated behind the mud mounds on which the tracks stand, but it would soon be the deadliest.

The floods that hit Mokwa, in north-central Nigeria’s Niger state, are the worst in living memory, with the death toll topping 150 and continuing to climb. Hundreds of people are missing.

Climate change has made weather swings in Nigeria more extreme, but it became clear that other human factors were also at play.

Floodwaters would usually pass through a couple of culverts in the mounds and run into a narrow channel.

But this time, debris had blocked the culverts, forcing water to build up behind the clay walls that eventually gave way.

The resulting flood swept through the community, flattening it within hours on Friday NZT.

A general view of damaged buildings in Mokwa. Photo / AFP

Volunteers and disaster response teams have been fanning out in the days since, sometimes recovering bodies nearly 10km away after people were swept into the powerful Niger River.

Yusuf struggled to save his family, before being knocked unconscious by the floodwaters.

When he woke up in hospital, he was told his wife, son, mother, and other relatives – nine in total – had been swept away.

Only one body has been recovered.

“I don’t know who rescued me,” Yusuf, 36, told AFP.

He stood where his house used to be as residents, including children as young as 10, dug through debris in search of bodies.

A powerful stench filled the air, which residents said came from decaying corpses trapped under the rubble.

Carcasses and puddles littered the area, and a huge gully now sits in the centre of the community.

The only excavator working nearby was focused on piling boulders to reinforce a small bridge on the edge of the community that had been destroyed by the flood.

“I have never seen anything like this in my 42 years of existence,” said Adamu Usama, a civil engineer who said he lost 10 relatives to the floods.

His house was barely spared.

“We saw the water carrying people but we cannot save [them], because we don’t know how to swim.”

Left in limbo

Days before the disaster struck Mokwa, the Nigerian Meteorological Agency had warned of possible flash floods in 15 of Nigeria’s 36 states, including Niger state, between Wednesday and Friday local time.

Floods in Nigeria are exacerbated by inadequate drainage, the construction of homes on waterways and the dumping of waste in drains and water channels.

In 2024, floods killed 321 people across 34 of Nigeria’s 36 states, according to the National Emergency Management Agency (Nema).

The Mokwa floods threaten to top that.

The Niger state emergency management agency said 153 people were killed in Mokwa as of today NZT, all of whom have been buried.

But residents and traditional rulers insist the number is far higher.

“Anybody that tells you this is the number of people that died is just guessing,” one resident, Saliu Adamu, 45, told AFP.

Although President Bola Tinubu said the disaster response was being aided by security forces, only a handful of soldiers and police were at the scene, mostly to ease traffic that had built up because of the damaged bridge.

The state Governor, Mohammed Umar Bago, is in Saudi Arabia for the Hajj pilgrimage. Residents said his deputy, Yakubu Garba, had visited.

Many people who lost their loved ones and property are still waiting for assistance.

-Agence France-Presse