A climate update from FAME Foundation’s Greenball Project

Every year, when the rains come to Nigeria, so does flooding. Roads disappear under water. Cars get stuck. Homes fill up with mud and dirty water. Families lose everything they own in a single night.

This has been happening for years, and 2026 is turning out to be another hard year, with Nigeria’s own capital city, Abuja, now feeling it too.

Abuja Got Flooded, And It Shocked Everyone

In August 2026, heavy rain hit Abuja and caused serious flooding in places many people never expected: Wuse 2, Katampe, Maitama, Asokoro, Gwarinpa, Utako, Guzape, Lokogoma, Garki, Nyanya, Gudu, and more. Cars were swallowed by floodwater. People got stranded on the road. Water rushed into homes and offices in some of the city’s most well-known neighbourhoods.

One report described it as: “We have not seen anything like this before.” For a city that many Nigerians think of as safer and better planned than places like Lagos, that came as a shock.

So, why did it happen? A few reasons kept coming up:

• Blocked drains: Government officials said drainage channels in areas like Wuse 2 were clogged with waste, silt, and debris, so when the heavy rain came, the water had nowhere to go.
• Loss of green space: Many Abuja residents believe open land and natural water channels that used to soak up rainwater have been built over, leaving less room for the water to escape.
• Bigger, harder rains: Weather officials had already warned that 2026 could bring heavier-than-normal rain to many parts of Nigeria, and a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, which means storms hit harder than they used to.
• Streams and low ground: Abuja actually have several natural streams running through it. When those streams overflow or get blocked, the low-lying parts of the city flood fast, even though the city itself sits fairly high above sea level overall.

It’s Not Just Abuja

Before Abuja flooded, Nigeria’s flood forecasters had already been warning that this would be a rough year. Back in April, the government said 33 states plus Abuja were at risk of flooding in 2026, with over 14,000 communities flagged as high-risk. Officials said the worst of it would likely hit between July and September.

That warning has already come true in several places:

• Nasarawa State: Flooding hit Lafia in mid-August.
• Ondo State: Flooding was reported later that same month.
• Lagos: The Lekki area saw flash floods and traffic chaos from unusual rain.
• Ogun, Kogi, Anambra, and Ebonyi: All saw early flooding that caught drainage systems off guard.

Why This Keeps Happening, Year After Year

It usually comes down to a mix of things:

1. Heavier rain: Climate change is making rainfall more intense and less predictable across West Africa.
2. Poor drainage: Many Nigerian cities are growing faster than their drainage systems can keep up with.
3. Building in the wrong places: Homes and shops are often built on land that naturally floods because rules aren’t enforced.
4. Water from Cameroon: Some of Nigeria’s worst floods happen when Cameroon’s Lagdo Dam releases water into the Benue River, and Nigeria still doesn’t have a matching dam of its own to hold that water back, something people have known about since the 1980s.
5. Blocked waterways: Trash, plastic, and construction waste dumped in drains and streams stop water from flowing away properly.

The Human Cost In Numbers

Flooding in Nigeria is not just an inconvenience. It’s genuinely deadly:

• 2022: Over 600 people died. About 1.4 million people were displaced. More than 200,000 houses were completely or partially destroyed.
• 2024: 320 people died nationwide, while more than 1.3 million people were affected and over 729,000 were displaced. In Borno State, the Alau Dam breach caused devastating flooding in Maiduguri, affecting more than 414,000 people and displacing about 389,000.
• 2025: 241 people died and nearly 460,000 people were affected nationwide. In Mokwa, Niger State, at least 151 people were confirmed dead following the devastating flood, with others initially reported missing.

After the water goes down, the suffering often continues: outbreaks of cholera, typhoid, and malaria in crowded displacement camps, ruined farmland, and rising food prices. Women, children, and poorer families are usually hit the hardest.

Why Are We Discussing This?

Nigeria already knows the floods are coming; the warnings are published months in advance. The problem is what happens between the warning and the disaster. Drains stay blocked. Waste keeps getting dumped in waterways. Green spaces keep disappearing. And when the rain finally comes, it’s too late to fix any of it.

This is exactly where community action matters. Through the Greenball Project, FAME Foundation is working to help close that gap: supporting drain clean-ups, protecting green spaces, spreading flood-season awareness in communities before the rain hits, and pushing for the kind of long-term investment that keeps a heavy rainstorm from turning into a tragedy.

Climate change didn’t invent Nigeria’s flooding problem, but it’s making it worse every year. The good news is that most of what turns rain into disaster (blocked drains, lost green space, and poor planning) is something we can actually change, together.

Sources

Figures and reports referenced from NIHSA, Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Water Resources and Sanitation, the Federal Ministry of Environment, and Nigerian news coverage, 2026.