Peo­ple search in flood­ed area fol­low­ing a down­pour in Mok­wa, Nige­ria, Fri­day, May 30, 2025. (AP Pho­to/Ch­en­e­mi Ba­maiyi)

The death toll from dev­as­tat­ing flood­ing in a mar­ket town in Nige­ria’s north-cen­tral state of Niger rose to at least 151 on Sat­ur­day, the lo­cal emer­gency ser­vice said, amid ef­forts to find more vic­tims.

Tor­rents of predawn rain­fall ear­ly Thurs­day un­leashed the dev­as­tat­ing flood on Mok­wa, near­ly 380 kilo­me­tres (236 miles) west of Abu­ja and a ma­jor trad­ing and trans­porta­tion hub where north­ern Niger­ian farm­ers sell beans, onions and oth­er food to traders from the south.

The spokesper­son for the Niger State emer­gency ser­vice, Ibrahim Audu Hus­sei­ni, con­firmed the up­dat­ed fa­tal­i­ty count to The As­so­ci­at­ed Press on Sat­ur­day. In ad­di­tion to the ris­ing death toll, 11 peo­ple were in­jured and more than 3,000 peo­ple were dis­placed, the of­fi­cial added.

At least 500 house­holds across three com­mu­ni­ties were af­fect­ed by the sud­den and in­tense flood that built rapid­ly in about five hours, leav­ing roofs bare­ly vis­i­ble and sur­viv­ing res­i­dents waist-deep in wa­ter, try­ing to sal­vage what they could and res­cue oth­ers.

Hus­sei­ni added that two roads were washed away and two bridges col­lapsed.

In a state­ment on Fri­day night, Pres­i­dent Bo­la Tin­ubu ex­pressed con­do­lences and said he had di­rect­ed the ac­ti­va­tion of an emer­gency re­sponse to sup­port vic­tims and “ac­cel­er­ate” re­cov­ery.

He said that se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies have al­so been asked to as­sist in emer­gency op­er­a­tions, which re­main un­der­way amid con­cerns that more bod­ies could be re­cov­ered in re­mote ar­eas.

“Re­lief ma­te­ri­als and tem­po­rary shel­ter as­sis­tance are be­ing de­ployed with­out de­lay,” the pres­i­dent said, promis­ing “no Niger­ian af­fect­ed will be left be­hind or un­heard of.”

Flood­ing is com­mon dur­ing Nige­ria’s wet sea­son. Com­mu­ni­ties in north­ern Nige­ria have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing pro­longed dry spells wors­ened by cli­mate change and ex­ces­sive rain­fall that leads to se­vere flood­ing dur­ing the brief wet sea­son. But this flood has been par­tic­u­lar­ly dead­ly in Mok­wa, a farm­ing re­gion near the banks of the Riv­er Niger.

Mok­wa com­mu­ni­ty leader Ali­ki Musa told the AP the vil­lagers are not used to such flood­ing.

The chair­man of the Mok­wa lo­cal gov­ern­ment area, Jib­ril Mure­gi, told lo­cal news web­site Pre­mi­um Times that con­struc­tion of flood-con­trol works was long over­due.

ABU­JA, Nige­ria (AP) —