At least 117 people have died and several others are still missing after heavy flooding destroyed thousands of homes in Nigeria’s Niger state, an emergency official said on Friday.

The death toll is a sharp rise from Thursday’s figure of 21 people, Ibrahim Hussaini, head of the Niger State Emergency Management Agency, said, adding that some 3,000 houses were submerged in two communities in the north-central state.

Nigeria is prone to flooding during the rainy season, which began in April.

In 2022, Nigeria experienced its worst wave of floods in more than a decade which killed more than 600 people, displaced around 1.4 million and destroyed 440,000 hectares of farmland.

The flooding incident in Niger state occurred on Wednesday night and continued into Thursday morning, Hussaini said, with a number of people still in the water.