Hundreds of inmates escape after floods pull down prison walls

Authorities in Nigeria have said 281 inmates escaped after devastating floods brought down a prison’s walls in the country's northeast.

A major dam collapsed on September 10, unleashing severe flooding that left 30 people dead and over a million displaced, and prompted evacuations across the state of Borno.

The floods in Borno, the birthplace of Boko Haram militants in the Lake Chad basin, started following heavy rainfall that has also caused floods in Cameroon, Chad, Mali and Niger, all part of Africa’s Sahel region that usually receives little rain.

Officers attempted to evacuate the city of Maiduguri's main prison last week when they found out that the prisoners had escaped, Umar Abubakar, spokesperson for the Nigeria Correctional Services said in a statement Sunday night.

“The floods brought down the walls of the correctional facilities including the Medium Security Custodial Centre, as well as the staff quarters in the city,” Abubakar said.

Security personnel were able to recapture seven of the inmates and an operation is still ongoing to locate the rest, he said.

The collapse caused some of the state’s worst flooding since the same dam collapsed 30 years ago. The state government said the dam was at capacity due to unusually high rains.

The deluge threatens not only the health and safety of the displaced but puts a strain on aid agencies and government resources, exacerbating an already critical humanitarian crisis.

In the last two weeks of August, more than 1.5 million people were displaced across 12 countries in West and Central Africa due to floods, and about 465 have been killed, according to the United Nations humanitarian affairs office.

Over the weekend, an additional 50,000 people were displaced in northeastern Nigeria as the floods intensified, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said on Monday.

“The situation in the Sahel and Lake Chad region is increasingly dire, as the compounding effects of conflict, displacement and climate change take a severe toll on vulnerable populations,” said Hassane Hamadou, NRC’s Central and West Africa regional director.

The floods in West Africa come at a time of flooding in Europe after days of torrential rain that caused rivers to burst their banks in several parts of the region.

Two years ago, heavy flooding in Nigeria killed more than 600 people across the country.

West Africa has experienced some of the heaviest flooding in decades this year, affecting over 2.3 million people, a threefold increase from 2023, according to the UN.