What Would It Take to Solve Flooding in Nigeria’s Lagos?

Hours after Tomi Adesina, miles away from home at work, learned that her home in Lekki, Lagos, had flooded, she did the one thing she knew could help her make sense of the tragedy; she took pen to paper. In a lengthy piece, Adesina broke down her personal experience as the incident was unfolding. She mapped the long history of flooding in Lagos and the city’s lethargic movements to fix it. Adesina reflected on the way her mind went numb as the incident unfolded and how distance helped her cope with the scale of the loss.

 “My brain could not think about what was actually happening at the house,” Adesina tells OkayAfrica a few weeks after the incident, which saw floodwater engulf the entire ground floor of the two-story building she shares with a flatmate. Thankfully, Adesina says a friend of hers, who is also her flatmate, was home when the rain began. They were able to save a few things from the kitchen, including the fridge. The water, as Adesina would learn, was up to the knees of her flatmate and friend.

“The flooding escalated very quickly, apparently within 30 minutes,” Adesina adds. “So they didn't have a lot of time to move things around. Later, when I was talking to the flooding committee in the estate, I learned that while there was flooding coming from the main expressway close to my house, the swamp behind the estate had also broken into the estate because the fence had become too weak from the consistent flooding and collapsed.”

Adesina and her flatmate are not the only Lagosians whose homes got flooded in recent bouts of rain, which began in early September. Various parts of the state were besieged by flooded streets, resulting in long traffic jams, keeping many out of work and businesses at a standstill. 

For decades, flooding has remained a major source of concern for many people in Lagos. A combination of factors, including lack of adequate drainage systems in many parts of the city, sand mining, receding coastal line, poor yet rapid urban development, and climate change, continues to contribute to incidents of flooding whenever it rains. According to an interconnected risks report, the city is threatened by the rise of sea level and a worrying sinking rate, pegged at -87 mm per year.

“59 per cent of the wetlands in Lagos have been lost, a predicament directly linked to the worsening flood problem in the city, which displaces thousands of people, making it clear that the short-term economic gain of sand mining under lax regulation puts at risk the future of many communities in Lagos,” the report states.

Cosmetic solutions, skin-deep problems

Less than a month after the recent flooding incidents in Lagos, the State opened its doors to the launch of the E1 Electric Powerboat race. The event made Lagos the first African city to host such a race and has been hailed as an opportunity for increased tourism and investment in Nigeria’s cultural center. At a conference before the event, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu noted the importance of Lagos water bodies to the state’s identity and cultural heritage. “The ocean is not just our heritage, it is our opportunity for jobs, innovation, transport, and resilience against climate change,” Sanwo-Olu wrote in a statement released on X. “Hosting the E1 Lagos GP championship this week has shown how water can inspire not only sport and entertainment, but also big ideas in technology and sustainability,” he said, adding, “Our investments in water transport, maritime infrastructure, and climate adaptation are only the beginning.”

However, this level of care and promise of infrastructure isn’t consistent with the lived realities of Lagosians, whose lives and businesses are under threat due to inadequate structures to support the flow between the land and the sea. Last year, a ban on single-use plastic was one of the state’s foremost attempts at reducing plastic waste and blockage to drainage systems, but it’s an effort that addresses only a small part of a larger, systemic inadequacy.

When people’s homes are flooded, they are often forced to hole up in their homes for hours, sometimes days, with no way of leaving. While Adesina was able to find temporary accommodation, her flatmate, Cynthia Ugwudike, was unable to leave their home for over 24 hours. This meant that Ugwudike couldn’t go down to cook because her kitchen was flooded, and couldn’t leave to get groceries because her street was also flooded and unnavigable. 

The day after, when a friend came to pick her up, she had to be physically carried through the water to get to her estate’s gate, as the water was up to her chest. “It was just a very undignifying experience,” says Ugwudike. “I didn't want to leave my house, but I had to. By the time I came back on Saturday, you could smell the decay that was coming out of the kitchen. The entire house was really bad.”

According to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), over 272,000 people across 25 states were affected by the flood as of August 2025. Of that number, Lagos state recorded 18,125 affected persons, while Adamawa and Akwa Ibom recorded 44,603 and 46,233, respectively.

It is possible that these losses would have been prevented if state administrations had adhered to the preemptive report released by the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) in February of this year. The report forecasted a drastic change in the typical flow that has come to be expected in the wet season. 

The mainland area of Lagos is also not immune to flood-related disasters. The Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) reported that despite an allocation of 16 billion Naira between January and August, the inner roads of a local government in Lagos Mainland were left in disrepair, worsening flooding issues.

Following her experience, Adesina has committed to writing to local government bodies to fix the drainage system, but the feedback she has received has ranged from apathy to resignation. “Nobody's saying anything, there's no government support. Which doesn't make any sense because there's this ecological fund that Nigeria made a bid for, and there are billions of dollars being distributed to different states and local governments for them to intervene whenever issues like this happen. But nobody has said anything in relation to solving any of our problems or just intervening in the meantime.” 

If Lagos is to dig itself out of a rut, experts as well as affected persons have pointed to a culture of preemptive solutions. Fixing drainage systems before the rains begin, rethinking its major development undertaking, including the Lagos coastal road project, which has blocked off significant access to the sea, further worsening flood congestion, and redirecting it into people’s homes.

“There is zero drainage anywhere where you live,” Ugwudike says. “When you leave, when you leave my estate and come outside, there's no gutter anywhere, just an open floor, and even if there's a gutter, it doesn't lead anywhere.”

Like many, Ugwudike and Adesina will be seeking accommodation in a different part of an already expensive city. Their lease isn’t up for another six months, and so they are stuck in a home they are scared to live in whenever it drizzles. “With a flood in Nigeria, there's nobody you can call, there's no way you can find help at that moment. It's a very sorting yourself out type of situation.”