The worst flooding to hit Nigeria in decades has claimed at least 104 lives and displaced more than 50,000 over the past two months in the center of the African country.

Mohammed Abdulsalam, a spokesman for Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said on Friday the unprecedented flooding experienced in 26 states stemmed from the release of water from dams, drainage systems blockage and heavy rain.

“Lack of collaboration and cooperation and weak coordination is the bane of disaster management in Nigeria. Diverse stakeholders operate in isolation with neither collaboration nor coordination. This often leads to inefficiency in the use of scarce resources, overlapping of activities, duplication of action and general confusion,” he warned.

Another NEMA spokesman, Yushua Shuaib, said the floods have been the worst to hit Nigeria for more than 50 years.


NEMA's coordinator for central Nigeria, Ishaya Chonoko, said, “In some parts, like Ibaji, the entire local government area is submerged by water. People are living on top of their roofs.”

NEMA warned that more than one million Nigerians were likely to die from the consequences of flooding if no precautionary measure was taken.

The agency said a possible collapse of Lake Nyos Dam in Cameroon would release over 55 million cubic meters of water.

In a 2005 report, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) had predicted that the dam would collapse in less than 10 years.

Torrential rains and flash floods, which are sometimes deadly, particularly in rural areas or overpopulated slums, are common in Nigeria from March to September.
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Press TV