Nigeria’s hydrological services agency has warned of the risk of flooding in 11 states after neighbouring Cameroon said it was starting to release water from one of its largest dams following recent heavy rains across West and Central Africa.
The warning comes as Nigeria is already facing severe flooding in the northeastern state of Borno, where a dam burst after heavy rains also caused flooding in Cameroon, Chad, Mali and Niger, all part of Africa’s usually sparsely rained Sahel region.
The Nigerian Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA) said Cameroonian authorities informed it on Tuesday that they had started monitoring water releases from the Lagdo Dam.
Cameroon has several dams on the Benue River, which flows downstream to Nigeria.
A spokesman for Cameroon’s electricity company ENEO, which operates the dam, told Reuters it was possible the dam was flooding, but the reservoirs had not been opened as of Wednesday morning.
NIHSA said Lagdo dam managers would release water gradually so as not to exceed the capacity of the Benue River downstream to avoid flooding.
However, 11 states, including Benue, Nasarawa and Kogi in the food-producing central region and the southern oil-producing states of Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers, are at risk, NIHSA said.
She urged the federal and state authorities in Nigeria “to be extra vigilant and deploy adequate preparedness measures to mitigate the possible impacts of flooding that may occur due to the increased flow levels of our major rivers at this time.”
In 2022, Nigeria lost more than 600 people and farmland in the worst floods in a decade following heavy rains and after Cameroon released water from the Lagdo Dam.
Experts then said Nigeria’s failure to complete construction of its own dam, which was supposed to support Cameroon’s, had compounded the disaster.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, is prone to flooding, but critics say poor infrastructure and poor planning are making the situation worse.
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