(Niamey) The exceptional flooding of rivers, due to the heavy rains that have been falling on the Sahel countries since June, has surrounded the capital of Niger, Niamey, this week, almost entirely cut off from the rest of the country.
The main exit routes from this city of around one and a half million inhabitants, located south of the Sahara, have been submerged by water and the number of victims has risen to 11,500 in Niamey alone, according to the latest official report.
In less than three months, the floods have left 217 dead and 200 injured in this vast desert country and more than 350,000 homeless, according to the military authorities, who came to power in a coup d’état in July 2023.
“From here, you can see my truck and four others, all swallowed up by the waters,” laments Ali Adamou, a driver in front of a torrent of mud at one of the exits from Niamey.
“A minibus has already sunk and I almost lost my life,” he shouts.
To leave Niamey, “you have to take a pirogue and hope to be able to continue the journey on board vehicles on the other bank,” explains Habiboulaye Abdoulaye, a resident of a peripheral village, totally isolated by the waters.
PHOTO BOUREIMA HAMA, ARCHIVES AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Authorities fear a prolonged disruption to traffic.
Most transport companies have suspended their connections to the interior of the country.
Alongside the dilapidated boats, gendarmerie patrol boats were sent as reinforcements to help the passengers.
“We remain vigilant and monitor those who disembark,” confides a soldier armed with a Kalashnikov. “People with bad intentions may try to infiltrate,” he explains.
For the past ten years, Niger has been the scene of attacks by armed groups – some of which are linked to Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State group – which have brought mourning to the country and are also operating in neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso.
To the east of the capital, the French construction group Sogea-Satom is working hard to ensure that traffic resumes as quickly as possible on National Road 1, the country’s vital axis which runs from west to east for nearly 1,500 km.
“The state is doing everything to restore traffic,” Colonel Salissou Mahaman Salissou, the junta’s Minister of Transport, assured public television.
Authorities fear a prolonged disruption to traffic.
Recently, they restored traffic on the Téra-Niamey axis, the only entry corridor for thousands of freight trucks from the north of Burkina Faso.
In mid-August, the Niger River Basin Authority (NBA) warned residents of the capital of an upcoming “rapid rise in water levels.”
Excavators are trying to raise the dikes, while volunteers and soldiers are filling the first cracks with sandbags.