Accusations fly over Nigerian floods

About 30,000 people have been displaced by the floods

An official in the northern Nigerian state of Jigawa has accused irrigation officials in Kano of causing floods in the area by releasing water from a dam without warning.

The Kano river dam was opened after heavy rain caused the water level behind it to become dangerously high.

Dozens of houses have been washed away in the past few days and about 30,000 people have been displaced by the resulting floodwater and hundreds are feared missing or dead.

The spokesman Mr Usman Zakari Dutse said the authorities had now been warned to expect more water, and he expressed fears of further devastation in the state.

Tidal wave

When the rains came, the river Wudil rose higher and higher.

It broke through a local dam and the water came like a tidal wave through the small village of Tila.

Zainab Baba Idris and 20 members of her family ran from their home. They all escaped, but they lost everything. Their household goods, their livestock and their stores of grain.

With little but the clothes on their backs, they reached higher ground and the safety of a school building.

It is being occupied by over 1,000 people displaced by the floods, a small proportion of the total number of displaced people scattered across the region.

Muddy swamps

Everywhere, homes are flattened by the waters - broken thatch, old pots and pans, rotten maize: all litter the ground as far as the eye can see.

Some people have returned to pick through the wreckage. Here and there, pathetic heaps of shoes, torches and clothes lie neatly on dry ground.

For the camps being set up by the local authorities, food is arriving and there is little sign of widespread disease for the moment.

In her temporary camp, Zainab and her family say they want to go back to their village eventually.

They want the government to provide money to help them.

It would be far safer on higher ground. But along the river the land is fertile and, until this week, the rains have usually been kind to people in the area.