Nigeria is facing a growing and underreported danger: landslides. While floods have dominated headlines in recent years, environmental experts warn that climate change, deforestation, and weak urban planning are combining to make deadly landslides increasingly likely across the country.
In August 2023, a landslide in Kogi State buried several homes and killed at least 12 people. Similar incidents in Anambra and Abia displaced hundreds. Yet these tragedies barely made the national news, and little has been done to prevent them from happening again. Analysts warn that Nigeria is “sitting on a time bomb.”
A ticking time bomb
Geoscientists say parts of Nigeria’s south-east and central belt are especially vulnerable. Hilly terrain, intense rainfall, and widespread deforestation have left the soil dangerously weak.
“We are sitting on a time bomb,” said Dr. Adewale Ogunsola of the University of Ibadan. “Rapid tree loss, illegal mining, and unregulated housing are destabilising slopes. When you add heavier rainfall linked to climate change, the risk of catastrophic landslides becomes inevitable.”
The Nigerian Meteorological Agency reports that several states, including Enugu, Ebonyi, and Cross River, have already recorded rainfall above seasonal averages this year. For communities built on fragile hillsides, every storm brings fresh fear.
Climate crisis and human cost
Globally including Africa, landslides claim thousands of lives each year. In Sierra Leone, a 2017 mudslide killed more than 1,000 people, wiping out entire neighbourhoods in Freetown. Experts warn Nigeria could face a similar disaster if no action is taken.
For residents living under precarious conditions, the warnings feel immediate. “We hear the soil cracking when it rains heavily,” said Chika Nwosu, a farmer in Enugu. “We know it’s risky, but we have nowhere else to go.”
Poor planning, weak response
Unlike neighbouring Cameroon, which has introduced hazard mapping in vulnerable regions, Nigeria has no national landslide monitoring framework. Disaster response is often reactive, with aid arriving only after lives are lost.
Critics also point to the mismanagement of the country’s ecological fund, a financial reserve meant to tackle environmental crises. “Billions are allocated, but very little reaches the communities at risk,” said one civil society campaigner in Abuja.
The consequences are stark. After May’s catastrophic floods in Niger State killed more than 200 people and left more than 500 missing, survivors accused leaders of neglect. Aid promised by state and federal authorities, they said, never reached them. Analysts fear that a large-scale landslide would expose the same failings in governance.
A warning from Sudan
Nigeria’s risk is underscored by events in neighbouring Sudan. In late August, more than 1,000 people were killed when a landslide wiped out the village of Tarasin in the Marra Mountains, western Darfur. Only one survivor was reported.
“The village and its people disappeared,” said Al-Amin Abdallah Abbas, a farmer from a nearby community. “It’s an unprecedented tragedy.”
The Sudan Liberation Movement, which controls the area, said heavy rainfall had triggered the collapse of the mountainside. Footage released by local outlets showed the village flattened between mountain ranges, with neighbours digging through rubble to recover bodies.
Darfur’s governor, Minni Minnawi, described it as a “humanitarian tragedy that goes beyond the borders of the region” and appealed for urgent international aid. But much of Darfur remains inaccessible to relief agencies due to Sudan’s ongoing civil war.
The landslide is now considered one of Sudan’s deadliest natural disasters in recent history. The country is already battling famine, widespread flooding, and a brutal conflict between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Tens of thousands have been killed, millions displaced, and the International Criminal Court has opened investigations into alleged war crimes.
For Nigeria, the lesson is clear: without urgent preventative action, similar devastation is possible.
Nigerians abroad watching closely
The environmental risks are also fuelling migration. The UK has seen a sharp rise in asylum claims from Nigerian students and other migrants, many citing insecurity and worsening climate disasters at home.
Between July 2024 and June 2025, more than 41,000 asylum applications were filed by people who originally entered the UK legally, with Nigerian students among the largest groups. In 2024 alone, 16,000 students sought asylum—nearly six times the number recorded in 2020.
British ministers have warned that asylum claims without strong grounds will be swiftly rejected, while post-study work rights for foreign graduates have already been reduced from two years to 18 months. Yet for young Nigerians, the fear of returning to a country where floods and landslides routinely destroy homes, livelihoods, and lives is a powerful motivator.
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Experts insist Nigeria must act urgently to reduce its vulnerability. Recommendations include: enforcing urban planning laws to stop illegal building on unstable slopes, investing in drainage, reforestation, and slope stabilisation, establishing early warning systems and hazard mapping for high-risk regions and ensuring ecological funds are transparently and effectively deployed.
Without such measures, they warn, Nigeria could be one heavy storm away from a Sudan-style catastrophe.
For families already scarred by disasters, the fear is real. “We lost everything in the flood,” said 71-year-old widow, Mrs. Garba, whose ten children died in May’s flooding in Mokwa, Niger State. “If another disaster comes, we will not survive it.”
As the rainy season intensifies, Nigeria’s leaders face a stark choice: invest now in protecting vulnerable citizens, or risk seeing their country added to the growing list of climate-induced tragedies shaking Africa.
