ABUJA SUBMERGED:‘We Have Not Seen Anything Like This Before’

… One night, rain erases line between Asokoro and FCT suburbs, Maitama bleeds

The rain started in trickles, small drops at a time. Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city, is not immune to rainfall.

But by 10pm last Tuesday, it was no longer raindrops. It was a flood — the first of its kind in recent history. By the time the rains eased, it had caused serious upset in the city’s prime towns-Asokoro, Maitama, Guzape, Lokogoma, Garki and Wuse.

The tears arising from the flooding are still reverberating in the city and environs.

Nobody ever saw it coming, but it did with audacity; and atrocities followed.

Mallam Umar Abdullahi, who occupies a security house in one of the posh buildings in Asokoro, first heard the sound of rain on his roof.

He dismissed it and went about his routine.

But he was forced to leave his bed when he heard his daughter screaming, “Mummy, water is coming in.”

He got up and switched on his torchlight to see what was amiss.

By the time he reached the door, water had overtaken the entire compound and was already pushing in under the door.

Four streets away, a government official’s SUV was stuck halfway up the road.

The driver had thought it was a shallow puddle. It wasn’t.

In Maitama, Kuzape and Guzape, the story was no different.

Houses had been sunk, many gates removed and fences to mighty buildings removed with ease by the rampaging floods that rose from the rainfall.

“This is the first time since I came to Abuja over a decade ago that I’m experiencing this,” Nasir Tanko said.

That Tuesday night, Abuja’s flood story changed.

It stopped being about Kubwa, Lokogoma and Galadima.

The water came for the hills.

It came for Asokoro, Maitama and Guzape and Katampe.

‘We have never seen this before’

Mr. Emmanuel Okoro has lived on the same Asokoro Street since 2008. He retired from the civil service. He keeps a clean compound and pays his bills.

“14 years,” he said on Wednesday morning, pointing at a brown line on his wall, “water has never come this high.”

By 12:30am, the water was in his boys’ quarters.

He and his wife spent the night moving things to the top of wardrobes. His rug from Dubai is ruined.

The bookshelf in his study tilted and fell.