Floodwaters gusting from a bursting dam in northern Nigeria inundated a zoo and swept animals including crocodiles and snakes into villages, leaving the region reeling from its worst flooding in years.
In the northeastern state of Borno, one of the areas in the region hardest hit by flooding, officials at a state-run zoo said Tuesday that rising waters had killed “more than 80%” of the zoo’s wildlife and washed animals, including deadly reptiles, into neighborhoods.
A video The image of an ostrich wading through a flooded road in the capital Maiduguri has been widely shared on social media.
A spokesman for NEMA, Nigeria’s disaster management agency, Manzo Ezekiel, told CNN on Wednesday that efforts are underway to recapture the animals.
“I believe that the zoo managers will not rest. They will do their best to save some of the animals that they can save, because the animals that go there are a danger to people,” he said.
Large parts of Maiduguri remain under water after the Alau Dam, 20 kilometres southeast of the city, overflowed over the weekend, submerging entire homes.
The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) described the floods as the worst in Maiduguri in 30 years.
Authorities have not yet confirmed any deaths in the floods, but more than 200 people have died in other floods in the country in recent weeks.
The UN agency said that an estimated 280,000 people have been affected in Maiduguri and about 200,000 others have been displaced in the city.
Weeks of flooding in Nigeria have left 229 people dead and more than 386,000 displaced, according to the latest data from NEMA shared with CNN. Northern Nigeria has been hit hardest by the flooding, the data shows.
NEMA said one of the spillways of the Borno Dam collapsed, “leading to a significant increase in water flow… and worsening flooding in surrounding areas.”
Spokesman Ezekiel told CNN that “the flooding is very intense” and “greater than predicted.”
“We didn’t expect so much water to flow into the city,” he added.
However, Nigeria’s meteorological agency NIMET had warned of the risk of flash floods in the country following torrential rains.
Last month, the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA) also reported warned from rising water levels on the Niger River, one of the country’s largest rivers, putting states on alert.
Extreme rainfall events are expected to increase in frequency and intensity across much of Africa, including Nigeria, as human-induced climate change warms the planet. projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change program.
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