Saratu Husseini bears misery like a loaded gun. On her face. From a distance, there’s little to see beyond the pointed muzzle of her grief. Closer, you’d hear the sharp crack of agony spurt from her lips: ‘I lost my three sons, on the same morning, few minutes apart. The water took them’. It takes a brave heart to fully comprehend the ordeal of the 44-year-old widow, who lost three children to the flood that swept through Tiffin Maza on Thursday, 29 May.
Saratu watched death happen three times, under 30 minutes. Three sons, gone, in one fell swoop. That morning, as the water surged all over Mokwa, Saratu’s sons got swept one after another, as if the river intended to drink her womb dry.
Mohammed, 12, drowned trying to rescue a goat and some food. The flood dragged him away like a doll. Aliyu, 15, lunged after his brother, screaming his name into the chaos. The current devoured him too. Kabir, the oldest at 18, having borne their mother on his back to highland, leapt back into the water to save his brothers. He got swept, arms flailing, until he vanished in the storm.
Saratu saw it all, screaming helplessly from her perch on highland, where her oldest son bore her to as the water rose rapidly to chest level. Three sons perishing in rapid succession, under 30 minutes, as they struggled to save her, some food, and other valuables, was just too much for her battered heart to take.
‘We lost Mohammed first, then Aliyu. I begged Kabiru not to go after them. But he wouldn’t listen’, she said, her voice searing, like a subdued howl.
Through her recall, Saratu’s mind unfurled like a maze of harrowing realities; sorrow nebulously flowered from its fragile precincts as she relived the deluge that turned her and about 416,600 residents of Mokwa into refugees on Thursday, 29 May.
Following torrential rainfall that began the previous night, a devastating flood swept through Saratu’s home in Tiffin Maza, pulling it down, alongside several others in Mokwa Local Government Area (LGA) of Niger State.
Officials later confirmed at least 207 people dead and over 1,000 missing. The flood submerged farmlands, destroyed about 500 homes, and injured more than 500 people. The recent disaster is simply one among many in a country fast becoming familiar with floodwaters; in 2024 alone, flooding killed over 1,200 people across Nigeria.
The impact of the recent flood hit hardest on Mokwa’s vulnerable divides: women and children.
The rain came to harvest their sons
Recounting her experience, Saratu Mai Karfa said she travelled to Mokwa to attend a wedding. ‘Unfortunately, the wedding was disrupted as the bride-to-be was killed by the flood. I also lost my youngest and eldest sons, aged 28 and 17 years’, she said.
Mai Karfa also lost a lot of valuables that were meant for the wedding: expensive clothes, perfumes and food items. ‘The wedding materials, including clothes for my children and other items, were stored at a neighbour’s house, but they got swept away by the flood’.
‘My daughter, who was also planning her own wedding, lost her wedding materials worth about N200,000 that she had bought with her own money and stored at my younger brother’s house. Unfortunately, nothing was salvaged from that house’.
Speaking with newsmen, her voice broke, and a tremor coursed through her as the conversation segued to her children. ‘I lost them all’, she wept, bemoaning the untimely loss of her three sons, aged 14, 17 and 24. ‘They were all I had’, she said, recalling how the water crept into her home and kept rising.
Cutting an equally sorrowful portrait, Zubaida Aliru relives her pain in the frame of the two small babies she can no longer hold: Hassan, 10, and Khadijatu, five. Despite the suddenness of the flood, Aliru was quick to react, reaching for her kids. Driven by maternal instincts, she held one child in each arm.
But as the waters swelled, she urged them both to cling tightly to her while she attempted to wade through it. But her maternal will was too feeble for the rapid current. Eventually, they let go, and the water swept them away. ‘I screamed desperately for help’, she said. ‘But the water was louder than my voice. Nobody came to help me because they were equally fighting their way out of the water’, she said. Her story repeats, though in a different tenor, in the narratives of several mothers.
Maryam Dahiru, however, considered herself lucky because none of her 18-member household died in the flood. But everything else vanished. Her goats, pots, grain sacks, and children’s notebooks.
There are 18 of us in the family, and fortunately, none of us died in the flood. But we have lost everything. The flood washed away all our food, belongings, and domestic animals. We didn’t salvage anything, not even a single shoe’, she said.
‘It’s hard to estimate the value of what we have lost. All we can do is pray to Allah to replace it with something better’, said Dahiru.
Of broken aid and bruised dignity
When tragedy strikes, sometimes, its silhouettes prowl in government uniforms. The distribution of the relief materials has let loose a tide of distrust, prejudice, and unseen borders. In Wurin Gangare and Gudun Ruwa, for instance, resentment festers among bereaved families and displaced survivors of the flood in real time. A young woman (names withheld) veiled in a pale yellow qimar, recounted the injustice currently being meted out to her and fellow displaced persons.
She said, ‘Let me start with what’s affecting us directly. We are a close-knit community in Gudun Ruwa and Wurin Gangare, and we know those who were directly affected by the flood and who wasn’t. However, the relief materials are being distributed unfairly. On a single afternoon alone.
I counted over about 20 people who were not directly affected receiving aid, while those of us who lost their loved ones and property have not gotten any’.
The relief distribution officials, she said, seem to be favouring people from the uphill areas, ‘specifically the Nupe community, without considering the actual victims and families of those who lost their lives’.
According to her, ‘We know many Hausa and Nupe people who were affected in Gudun Ruwa, but it’s unfair that those who were not affected are collecting relief materials. We know who the dead belong to. We know the houses that collapsed. Yet people from uphill who lost nothing got three cooking pots. We got one. Some got none’.
However, a government aid worker serving the area, dismissed her allegations claiming they were exaggerated and stemmed from her impatience with the system.
While the relief materials may not be enough, several humanitarian actors are working with the state to accommodate the needs of all the survivors. ‘In general, we cook more than 25kg for 50 people, but we also provide for 300 or more, that is about 30 measures per day’, said Sa’adatu Aliyu, an official of the Federation of Muslim Women Association of Nigeria (FOMWAN) Mokwa LGA chapter.
Aliyu added that aside from providing food items, her organisation also provides clothing, toiletries and detergents. ‘Some NGO’s help us in sharing the food and items to the IDPs’, she said.
The Director of Information at the Niger State Emergency Management Agency (NSEMA), Dr. Ibrahim Audu Hussaini, also confirmed that efforts are underway among government ministries, federal agencies, NGOs, and international partners to ensure fair distribution of relief materials and support to survivors of the flood.
According to him, the federal government has sent 200 trucks of grains and pledged ₦2 billion for resettlement. The state government, however, rejected the idea of IDP camps, allocating ₦1 billion for temporary shelters instead.
To ensure fair relief distribution, Hussaini said, beneficiaries are being verified through revalidation, with cash transfers and food items underway. Likewise, missing persons are still being identified. ‘We’re verifying each case carefully to avoid false reports,” Hussaini said, and added that many families are being issued death certificates and victims’ data is being collected, including approximate ages based on seasonal birth estimates. So far, over 50 per cent of affected persons have been documented, despite the intention to complete the exercise within 14 days.
Across Tiffin Maza and other parts of Mokwa, the flood’s cruel current has left several women without a lifeline.
In a situation where opportunities for women are scarce, wives without income find themselves completely destitute and with slim chances of relief. The flood destroyed homes and markets and the delicate webs of dependency these women had threaded with neighbours, friends, and family.
Widows who had leaned on children for food, or on neighbours for shelter, now face empty doorways and unanswered calls. There are fewer doors to knock on, to begin with, as most of the houses have been destroyed by the flood.
There is no gainsaying that the flood bears a devastating impact on several women.
A’isha Audu, who lost four family members, now count time by the number of days since she last ate a decent meal. For women like her, who once survived by a petty trade and from her sons’ farm labour, the destitution seems absolute. The deluge drowned their very fragile network of dependence.
Women who once kept families afloat with modest incomes from trade or farm labour also lost everything. In an economy already bent under the weight of conflict and hardship, their losses ripple outward, casting entire families into unyielding poverty.
Before the flood, Lailatu Suleimanu, 46, survived on the small earnings from her food business. But the flood washed away her little raw supplies and little savings, she said. Now, she must rely on the sparse rations doled out at the IDP camp.
For mothers without husbands or children, those whose strengths were rooted in the safety of family, the floodwaters have stolen their very means of survival.
Stripped of homes, the displaced women now huddle in makeshift camps where food is a scarce commodity. Each woman’s story has the same bitter end. Farmlands have been buried beneath silt and mud, and small businesses that once afforded dignity and a meagre income are now in ruins. No thanks to the flood.
Left to the elements
Grief, in Mokwa, wears the face of a woman without food and a doubtful future. Widows like Zainabu Muhammadu now sit by the wreckage of houses that once pulsed with her children’s laughter. Her sons—14, 17, and 24—were swept away in one tragic blink. With her husband gone years ago, it was her boys who sheltered her from the elements and assuaged her sorrow. They tilled borrowed farms for grain, fetched medicine when the fever came, and laughed away her worries.
At their demise, hunger and desolation ensnare her like a second widowhood. She owns no land and must learn to live without her sources of strength. Neighbours who once brought bowls of grain and yams no longer visit. They, too, are displaced and undone.
As survivors of the flood jostle for portions of inadequate relief materials, women in particular must deal with men who hunt for the bodies of already broken women. Muhammadu sleeps with one eye open, praying that the moonlight is enough to shame predators away.
The camps offer the bleakest shelter. For several women, these places are rife with peril; the nights are haunted by the possibility of assault, with predators lurking in the fringes of their fragile sanctuaries. Hunger twists their stomachs as surely as the cold hardens the ground beneath them. And as night falls, they cower together, a mass of grieving mothers, weary daughters, and shell-shocked widows, clinging to each other in a fellowship borne of loss.
Outside the official emergency shelters, they flock under the beams of their destroyed homes and makeshift tents, eyes dulled by loss, bodies starved by days without food, spirits bowed under the weight of survival. Beyond the camps, the flood has disbanded families like seeds scattered in the wind. Children, once under their mothers’ watchful eyes, now roam the streets, doing whatever menial work they can find. Their mothers watch with haunted pride and sorrow, knowing that each day’s small earnings stave off starvation but steal their childhood.
The trauma of survival
There is no gainsaying that women and children compose the heart of the afflicted, bearing a unique burden of hardship. They are not only displaced from their physical homes but also pushed from the fragile balance of survival. Arjun Jain, UNHCR’s representative in Nigeria, observed that the floods are a fresh wound upon open scars inflicted by years of displacement and conflict on affected communities. ‘Communities which, after years of conflict and violence, had started rebuilding their lives were struck by the floods and once again displaced’, he said.
According to the UNFPA’s 2022 estimate, about 6.7 million people – 80 per cent – of the 8.4 million people requiring humanitarian assistance in Nigeria are women and children and are in the three most affected northeastern states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe. Compared to the previous year’s 8.7 million, this represents a slight four per cent decline in people in need of humanitarian assistance.
Within these population groups, some of the most vulnerable people with special needs are housewives and girls who, in some cases, face a triple burden of finding ways to survive, caring for their families and protecting themselves from sexual violence.
According to the Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO) for 2022, an estimated 1.4 million individuals (46% IDPs, 23% returnees, 31% host communities) will require Gender Based Violence (GBV) prevention and response services in the affected states.
After the May deluge, an unwieldy social crisis manifests in its wake, accentuating rising gender inequalities. The risk for women and girls caught in such a situation often multiplies in real time, argued social worker Omolara Odila. According to her, ‘Women are more vulnerable during emergencies and are left to navigate hardships that men rarely face in the same way. Many of them are poor, and the flood has rendered them even more vulnerable than most can truly comprehend’.
She argued that due to the widespread and systemic impoverishment of females in the disaster-prone areas, they are unable to adapt, without urgent and sustained help, to hardships foisted on them during emergencies, like the flooding and other humanitarian disasters.
Odila maintained that women are also generally more traumatised and vulnerable to Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) and other personal safety and health challenges imposed by disasters and social inequalities between genders. ‘The higher incidences of SGBV may increase the number of deaths and diseases among women and girls’, she said.
Previous findings in flood disaster zones revealed that SGBV often surges within distressed communities. Speaking to The Nation in the aftermath of the September 2024 flood, Hussein Jaka Ahmedu, a haulage truck operator from Konduga, stated that, ‘Many child molestation and rape cases happen in the dark but they go unreported because the victims fear being shamed and stigmatised’, she said.
Several females face the brutality of survival on multiple fronts, not only battling natural calamities but also the malice of males emboldened by the void of law and order. Health services are scarce; when available, they are stretched too thin to provide the care so urgently required. The risk of maternal mortality grows perilously high for expectant mothers, unable to access safe labour conditions amidst ruin.
According to Noemi Dalmonte of UNFPA. ‘The cycle of vulnerability persists, leaving these women no respite,” she said. “Every disaster disproportionately weighs upon the women, increasing the threat of sexual violence’.
No doubt, the impact of floods often surpasses the loss of lives and damage to critical infrastructure. Not often highlighted is its impact on female health, according to experts. Damaged infrastructure may impede access to health resources. Pregnant women, as established, could be at a higher risk, thus leading to a rise in maternal deaths.
Flooding, conflict and other humanitarian crises have only worsened the pre-existing severe reproductive health and GBV situations. Data from the 2018 NDHS show that a disaster-prone zone like the northeast, for instance, has a very high Maternal Mortality Rate of 1,546 per 100,000 live births as compared to the national value of 546 per 100,000 births.
Teenage pregnancy is also high at 32%, a major health concern because of its association with higher morbidity and mortality for both the mother and the child. The crisis with the health system disruption has further aggravated the situation. Only 22% of deliveries are assisted by a skilled birth attendant, exposing women and newborns to increased risk of death and complications.
While the statistics are currently indeterminable for flood-ravaged parts of Mokwa, humanitarian needs remain critical and inaccessible to women and children, among other vulnerable segments of the displaced residents, despite interventions.
In addition to population displacement, there are pressing public health concerns, as many women struggle to live in overcrowded and unsanitary IDP camps, without access to clean water, toilets, bathrooms, and emergency healthcare. Many women hitherto reliant on their missing or now incapacitated husbands and children suffer social exclusion and discrimination that limits them from education, employment and other social benefits.
The flood and displacement have also aggravated food insecurity among unemployed female segments of the displaced population. Prices of food staples, sanitary towels, and other essential provisions have increased due to hoarding and inflation.
The way forward
The International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) has noted the need to prioritize the safety, well-being of women and children now exposed to heightened risks of exploitation, abuse, and deep psychological trauma in response to the crisis for victims of Mokwa flood in Niger state.
The Country Vice President, FIDA Nigeria, Eliana Matins and Chineze Obianyo, National Publicity Secretary, in a statement expressed deep condolences to the people of Mokwa, while commending the interventions of the Niger State Government, NEMA, and various humanitarian actors.
FIDA, however, noted that the crisis demands a more coordinated, compassionate, and gender-sensitive response as the impact on women and children is particularly alarming. ‘As the most vulnerable group in times of crisis, many women and children are now exposed to heightened risks of exploitation, abuse, and deep psychological trauma. Their safety, dignity, and well-being must be urgently prioritised’.
Against this background, the group called on the government, civil society, development partners, and well-meaning Nigerians to prioritise the protection and needs of women and children in all response and recovery efforts.
They also advocated for better legal aid and psychosocial support to survivors, particularly those who may be dealing with trauma, abuse, or displacement.
An independent assessment by UN Women established that Gender-based violence (GBV) cases are on the rise, exacerbated by unsafe shelter conditions, lack of privacy, and inadequate protection systems. To this end, there is a need for the restoration of water and sanitation hygiene (WASH), drainage facilities and other basic services, and investment in community-centred recovery, according to another joint assessment by the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the Nigerian Red Cross Society (NRCS).
On its part, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has called for enhanced disaster preparedness to reduce the impact of floods caused and ensure adequate protection for victims, who add to the population of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the country.
The call, NHRC’s Executive Secretary, Tony Ojukwu (SAN) said, became imperative given the recent flood disaster in Mokwa, Niger State, which resulted in the death of over 200 people, many remain missing and others displaced. Speaking at the NHRC’s monthly Human Rights Situation Dashboard held in Abuja, Ojukwu announced the launch of a new quarterly Human Rights and Internal Displacement Dashboard, the first of its kind in Nigeria’s history, in response to the growing displacement crisis.
He said the initiative, developed in partnership with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), will systematically track and address the challenges facing IDPs, asylum seekers, refugees, and returnees.
According to him, the NHRC recorded over 40,000 displacement incidents and 1,460 rights complaints from vulnerable groups between February and April this year, adding that many continue to suffer from inadequate shelter, lack of healthcare, and systematic rights violations.
The NHRC’s call resonates against the backdrop of rising humanitarian and rights crises in the country. In the month of May alone, the Commission recorded over 275,256 complaints.
This overwhelming number of complaints was a clear indicator that ‘too many Nigerians feel unprotected’ and that the country risks normalising distress and impunity, said Ojukwu.
‘When over a quarter of a million people come to the National Human Rights Commission in just one month, the message is loud and clear’, he said, adding that the wide range of rights violations witnessed in May included violent attacks, sexual violence, and mass deaths from natural disaster.
Beyond grief…
There is no gainsaying the flood disaster triggered on Thursday, 29 May, 2025, by torrential rainfall that began the previous night, overwhelmed the inadequate and poorly maintained drainage infrastructure of Tiffin Maza and other parts of Mokwa.
The downpour, which lasted several hours over two days, caused bordering rivers and smaller tributaries to overflow their banks. Water surged into low-lying communities, especially Tiffin Maza, Unguwan Gwari, and surrounding settlements, where homes were built close to natural waterways without flood defences, and left a town of thousands clinging to debris, physical and emotional.
The impact on women and children is particularly devastating.
Abubakar Sabo Muhammad, head boy of the almajiri school, Madarasatul Tarbiyyatul Islamiyya, owned by Malam Hassan Umar and located in Tiffin Maza, recalling the moment when the flood surged into their school and the adjacent mosque in which they slept, said he does not ever wish to experience such calamity again.
According to the native of Darangi-Rijau, in Kebbi State, he was sharing the Holy Quran to fellow almajiri students after the morning prayers. ‘One of them asked me for permission to go to the toilet and returned immediately, visibly scared and shaken. He told us that a massive flood was approaching us. As each student went outside to look at the flood, they would come back looking very scared and hide behind me.
‘As the water rose around us, I instructed the boys to move to the inner part of the house. When it became heavy, we climbed over the perimeter fence of the house which served as our study centre.
My 12-year-old cousin, Muhammadu, clung to one of the windows of the mosque. Another student, whose name I can’t recall, climbed a tree near the school to survive but was swept away when the flood uprooted the tree’.
Among the residents of Tiffin Maza who were carried away by the flood was Malam Umar, whose family consisted of about 20 people. Only four of them survived: his wife, two small children, and another boy who spent the night in a shop in front of his residence.
In some way, this narrative highlights the catastrophic impact of the flood triggered on Thursday, 29 May. It also offers an intimate account of the public devastation and private miseries endured by survivors of the deadly deluge. Consider, for instance, the sad case of the two Saratus.
Saratu Mai Karfa got trapped in Mokwa while trying to attend a wedding that would never hold, as the flood killed the prospective bride. It also killed Mai Karfa’s youngest and eldest sons. This was just at the cusp of her own daughter’s wedding. The flood carried away her daughter’s bridal garments and the groom’s offerings.
Her husband, who lives in Lagos, received the news over a phone call, struggling to make sense of his losses, as his wife and daughter wailed into the mouthpiece.
Thus, the wedding became a wake, and Mai Karfa ‘cannot count what has been lost’.
Saratu Husseini, on her part, lost three sons to the flood. It’s one month after, and the 44-year-old is grappling with serious heartbreak. ‘When my husband died, my sons were there to console me. Now that they are dead, I have no one to console me’.
Hardly anyone commiserates with her, perhaps because folk are learning to deal with their own losses.
‘Every family in Mokwa has been impacted by the flood in different ways’. said an NSEMA official. Indeed, each individual and each family suffered losses private to them.
Consequently, Saratu is learning to deal with her pain alone. Many of her friends had simply vanished or perished in the flood. Those still around are too bogged down by personal struggles to care about her. And those who dare look her way, scorn her ordeal even as they talk eyes to her grief.
Saratu bears it all. With equanimity and total surrender. Perhaps because it’s all she can afford. The quiet resignation of a woman who had seen her world end three times in 30 minutes.
