On June 3rd, 2025, a United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) Humanitarian Situation Report on the recent floods in the Mokwa local government area of Niger State was published on ReliefWeb, the humanitarian information project of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. According to ReliefWeb and other Nigerian news sources, the Mokwa flooding, which occurred on May 28, 2025, was regarded as one of the most catastrophic flash floods in the country’s recent history.
News reports and official statements have it that the floods killed at least 500 people and confirmed that over 600 others were missing. Approximately 3,018 residents were displaced, the Mokwa Bridge was severely damaged, two major roads were destroyed, over 250 homes and businesses were lost, more than 10,000 hectares of farmland were destroyed, and this does not include other unreported deaths and damages caused by the flood.
But floods and flooding are not new to Nigeria and Nigerians. A recent scholarly publication that shows the number of flood occurrences across the six geographical zones of Nigeria within the last decade reveals that 2012 had the highest number of flood occurrences in the country, closely followed by 2015, 2017, 2018, and 2019, with the North-West zone experiencing the highest number of flood incidents within the last decade.
Unfortunately, while Nigeria is still recovering from the devastating and disheartening effects of the Mokwa flooding, and with more severe rainfall and rising rivers, the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) and the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA), since June, have continued to issue flood alerts, the latest of which warned of high flood risks in 198 local government areas across 32 states and the Federal Capital Territory between August 7 and 21.
This news and these projections should have significant implications for the government and major stakeholders in the Nigerian climate and environmental sector. But it seems it does not matter to them, not until the next major flooding or natural disaster strikes at a magnitude that shakes the country. The government and the major actors in the Nigerian environmental sector are mainly reactive to climate change rather than innovatively proactive, which is worrying and disappointing in these times that digital technology, climate governance, and smart policies are being leveraged to control and manage climate and environmental disasters.
What do I mean when I say that the government and its profit and non-profit partners are mostly reactive rather than proactive in climate and environmental issues in the country? The Mokwa flooding occurred on May 28. On June 5, the New Telegraph reported that President Bola Tinubu had approved the immediate release of ₦2 billion for the reconstruction of homes destroyed by the flood and also authorized the delivery of 20 trucks of food items to displaced residents. Furthermore, on August 6, The Guardian reported that the wife of the Nigerian president, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, donated ₦1 billion to support victims of the Mokwa flood. These reactive responses or interventions happened a few days and weeks later after the flooding. What was done to predict and control the flooding days or weeks before it happened?
These donations from the presidency and the government, and other humanitarian gestures from profit and non-profit organizations, are good and necessary in these unfortunate circumstances, but they are only reactive — what Nigerians would describe as “medicine after death.” As good as the monetary and food donations are, what is the assurance that they will get to the right beneficiaries? As noble as these gestures are, they cannot bring back the dead, regrow the damaged farms, heal the physical and psychological wounds of the tens of thousands of victims, or mitigate future flooding incidents.
Where then do the solutions lie? Judging from what I have seen and studied about how some developed countries manage their climate and environmental challenges, I would say the solutions lie in innovative climate technology, policy, leadership, education, and funding.
The mainstream and social media are awash with recent news of how some countries are detecting flooding, storms, tsunamis, and hurricanes weeks, sometimes months, before they happen. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), aided by satellite data and imagery, is making this possible every day. Some of the technologies, though expensive, can be leveraged by Nigeria and Nigerians to detect in advance floods and adverse weather conditions that can cause harm to people, properties, and the environment.
On climate policy, leadership, education, and funding, the government is lagging compared to other countries. This is not to say that the Nigerian government has neither policies on climate and environmental issues nor the funds to drive sustainable environmental actions. The point here is the effective implementation of the policies and funds aimed towards proactive prevention or mitigation of environmental disasters. Moreover, the level of climate and environmental education among Nigerians is poor, and the government ministries and agencies in charge of educating the people on these vital issues are not doing enough in this regard.
A few days after the Mokwa flooding, The Punch reported that despite over ₦620bn in Ecological Funds accruing to state governments from 2012 to date, responses from the sub-national level have consistently fallen short of expectations, making flood disasters a recurring national tragedy.
The Ecological Funds are meant to finance resilience and recovery projects, but their use is rarely transparent, and the objectives of the funds remain a mirage. This explains why in Mokwa, after the flooding, the local response was inadequate, and the interventions from many quarters were not sustainable enough to help the victims and their communities.
So, what have the Mokwa flooding and other devastating floods in the past taught the Nigerian government, organisations, and people?
If we are wise and strategic enough, by now, we should have learned that sincere investment in and implementation of climate technology and policies are the ways forward. Imagine what the ₦2 billion the Nigerian president and the ₦1 billion his wife donated to the victims of the Mokwa flooding could have done if that whopping amount of money had been effectively invested in climate technology and policy implementation. Perhaps the flooding would have been detected earlier, and the people would have evacuated days before the flood struck, thereby drastically reducing human casualties and property destruction.
We must know that climate adaptation should not be about responding to disasters but preventing them in real time. We must build systems that transform real-time data into response strategies and also build lasting trust between the government and affected communities that will lead to proactive evacuation and protection from extreme environmental disasters.
The 2021 Climate Change Act and the National Adaptation Plan provide a legal framework, but most states have not domesticated them. This is the right time to rectify this act and these policies if we must protect ourselves and the environment. Furthermore, climate and environmental matters must not be relegated to the environmental ministries and agencies alone. All Nigerians must see, speak, and handle environmental issues of the country the way they talk about other economic and socio-political issues that affect their daily lives.
So, going forward, as long as climate and environmental issues are concerned, Nigeria and Nigerians must strategically key into innovative investments in and implementation of climate technology, policies, governance, education, and funding, and they must do so in a sincere and sustainable way.
If not for anything, this is what the Mokwa flooding taught us.
Akajiaku, project manager and data scientist, writes from the United Kingdom
