The Federal Government has disclosed that Nigeria lost about 46.681 billion to floods last year.

Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq who stated this at the public presentation of the GRADE Assessment of the 2022 Flood in Abuja yesterday said the total estimated cost of economic damages was quantified by a new technology called Global Rabid Host Disaster Assessment Damage Estimation (GRADE) was provided by the World Bank. 

She said the estimation of the impact was done from June to November 2022, adding that heavy rainfall which ushered in flooding in many parts of the states left houses damaged or destroyed.

She, however, said the 2022 flooding was worse than that of 2012. 

She said residential buildings that were destroyed gulped about $2.237 billion while the total cost of destruction of non-residential buildings was $1.376 billion. 

She added that for agriculture, the total cost of destruction was about $1.837 billion while infrastructure laid waste as a result of the flood was $1.232bn. 

“For the number of persons affected, it has risen over the season since June up to between 4.4 million and 4.9 million affected people on 25th November and 2 per cent of the country’s population,” she said. 

She said in terms of destroyed and damaged buildings, significant damage in many states. 

She said some of the worst affected states were: Jigawa, Rivers, Taraba, Cross River, and Delta state, adding that over 650, 000 hectares of crops had been damaged.