Flooding in Nigeria’s Niger State this week has killed 151 people and forced several thousand from their homes, an emergency official told Reuters on Saturday.
Ibrahim Audu Hussaini, director of information at the Niger State Emergency Management Agency, provided the new death toll, which was previously reported at 117 on Friday.
He added that over 500 households had been impacted and more than 3,000 people displaced.
People are seen near their collapsed houses following a flooding that killed 151 people and forced several thousand from their homes in Mokwa, Niger State, Nigeria, May 31, 2025. REUTERS/Stringer
The flooding incident in the central town of Mokwa in Niger State occurred on Wednesday night and continued into Thursday morning. Days later, rescuers were still picking through mud and debris in search of bodies.
Nigeria is prone to flooding during the rainy season, which began in April.
In 2022, the country’s worst wave of floods in more than a decade killed more than 600 people, displaced around 1.4 million and destroyed 440,000 hectares (1.09 million acres) of farmland.
In other international news, Sudan’s new Prime Minister Kamil Idris has dissolved the country’s caretaker government, state news agency SUNA reported late on Sunday.
SUNA did not specify when a new government, the first since war broke out between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, would be announced.
Idris was appointed by army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s head of state. The RSF has said since earlier this year that it would form its own parallel government with allied parties.
Idris took the oath of office on Saturday as the country’s first prime minister since a military-led coup in 2021.
In a speech on Sunday, he vowed to remain at equal distance from all political parties and to prioritize stability, security, and reconstruction in Sudan.
Meanwhile, lawyers for Tanzania’s jailed opposition leader Tundu Lissu filed a complaint on Friday to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in a bid to ramp up international pressure for his release.
Lissu, chairman of Tanzania’s main opposition party and runner-up in the 2020 presidential election, was arrested last month and charged with treason, a capital offence, over comments he is alleged to have made calling on supporters to prevent national elections in October from going ahead.
Tanzania’s government spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
While President Samia Suluhu Hassan has won plaudits for easing political repression, she has faced questions about unexplained abductions of government critics in recent months.
Hassan, who will stand for re-election in October, has said her government respects human rights and ordered an investigation into the reported abductions.
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