Weeks of heavy rain have pushed rivers over their banks across 28 of Nigeria’s 36 states, killing 185 people and displacing about 208,000, according to the National Emergency Management Agency. Officials blame poor drainage infrastructure and poorly maintained dams rather than unusually high rainfall this year.
Jigawa state has been hit hardest, with 37 deaths recorded so far. Schools and other public buildings across the state are now sheltering displaced families, and the head of its emergency services, Nura Abdullahi, described the scale of the damage as devastating. Authorities have warned that floodwaters moving toward central and southern states could still worsen in the coming weeks.
The damage to farmland is the most alarming figure for food security planners. About 107,000 hectares of cropland have been destroyed, most of it in the northern states that normally produce the bulk of Nigeria’s grain harvest. Nigeria already has roughly 32 million people facing acute hunger, around one in ten of everyone the United Nations food agency counts as acutely hungry worldwide.
Farmers count the cost
In Zamfara state, resident Abdullahi Gummi said he had spent around 300,000 naira (roughly 125 GBP at current rates) preparing his fields this season. “We spent around 300,000 naira on planting, but everything is gone,” he said.
Manzo Ezekiel, a NEMA spokesperson, urged people living in flood-prone areas to leave immediately. “People need to evacuate now, because we don’t have time any longer,” he said. The Nigerian Meteorological Agency had forecast delayed or near-normal rains this year, unlike the 2022 floods that killed more than 600 people and displaced over a million. Forecasting unit head Ibrahim Wasiu Adeniyi said the shift points to human-driven climate change rather than a one-off weather pattern.
A recurring strain on food supply
This is not Nigeria’s first severe flood season, but the concentration of damage in grain-growing states raises the risk of higher food prices nationwide in the months ahead, on top of an already strained supply chain. Relief agencies are still assessing how much of the destroyed cropland can be replanted before the dry season sets in.
The scale of displacement, more than 200,000 people in a matter of weeks, has stretched emergency shelters thin, and aid groups say the response will need sustained funding well beyond the immediate rescue phase. For now, the priority remains getting people out of harm’s way and keeping emergency food supplies moving into the hardest-hit northern states.
The 107,000 hectares lost this season sit on top of an agricultural system already under strain from input costs and insecurity in parts of the north. Agronomists warn that even fields spared outright destruction may see reduced yields where standing water lingered long enough to damage root systems, meaning the final toll on this year’s harvest could climb well above the current estimate once full assessments are complete. Grain traders in Kano and Kaduna say they are already watching prices for maize and sorghum for early signs of tightening supply.
Humanitarian agencies operating in the affected states say they are prioritising clean water and shelter over food aid for now, since flood-related disease outbreaks typically follow within days of standing water receding. Coordinating relief across 28 states simultaneously has strained logistics networks that were already stretched thin by earlier emergencies this year, and officials say they expect the full economic cost of the floods will not be clear until the water recedes from the last affected farmland in the coming weeks.
