Only about one in five flood-hit Nigerian households received a government alert before the 2022 floods struck, and just 8.3% managed to evacuate beforehand, according to survey findings cited in a new policy paper that calls for a permanent coastal resilience system to replace seasonal emergency response.
The paper, published by the Nigerian think tank Agora Policy, argues that the 2026 wet season has made the issue urgent. Flooding and rain-triggered landslides have damaged homes, businesses and infrastructure and displaced households in Calabar, Lagos, Akwa Ibom and parts of Rivers State.
Agora Policy says the water may arrive in the rainy season, but the damage comes from a wider system of pressures. These include rising seas, sinking land in parts of Lagos, intense rainfall, blocked drains, eroding shorelines, polluted waterways, shrinking wetlands and weak building control. Households with little capacity to absorb repeated losses are hit hardest.
The think tank says Nigeria does not mainly lack climate plans. It lacks connected implementation. Data sits in different agencies, and drainage, land-use control, environmental protection, emergency management and social protection are funded through separate budgets.
A joint assessment by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) across 18 states, conducted between 28 October and 8 November 2024, recorded 2,991,406 people affected by floods, including 896,268 displaced.
Five coastal-zone states, namely Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo and Rivers, accounted for 1,061,748 of those affected, or 35.5% of the total.
The paper cautions that the assessment does not show whether coastal populations face a higher per-person risk.
In Lagos, IOM recorded 275,621 affected people across 14 local government areas, but only 2,313 were displaced. Agora Policy says low displacement should not be read as low losses, since many residents stayed in damaged communities.
A survey by the National Bureau of Statistics, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and the United Nations Development Programme covered 3,600 households in six states about the 2022 floods.
It found that 64% of households were affected and 40.9% were displaced. Nearly half, 49.3%, had their main food source affected, and average damage to affected homes was about ₦1.97 million.
Only 44.8% reported recovery by the time of interview. Just 10.4% received support during the floods and 1.5% reported government assistance afterwards. The survey findings are not national estimates.
Agora Policy says better forecasts cannot protect households that do not receive messages, lack transport, cannot find accessible shelter or fear losing property they leave behind.
An advisory for 27 August to 9 September 2026 identified 915 communities as facing critical flood risk, a scale the paper says demands practical action in each named community.
The World Bank’s 2021 Groundswell study estimates an average of 8.3 million internal climate migrants in Nigeria by 2050 under a pessimistic scenario, against 1.1 million under an optimistic one. The paper stresses these are planning scenarios, not predictions of mass exodus.
Risks differ along the coast. In Lagos, radar observations from 2018 to 2021 found subsidence above 4 millimetres a year across much of the study area, while a 2024 satellite study put Gulf of Guinea sea-level rise at about 3.89 millimetres a year.
In the Niger Delta, a 2025 study estimated a 26.4% decline in mangrove cover from the late 1980s to 2023, citing oil pollution, urban expansion and wave-driven erosion. In Cross River, the paper recommends a demonstration area for estuary monitoring, fisheries protection and mangrove restoration.
Agora Policy proposes that Nigeria: Build a shared coastal risk observatory using existing agency data, Connect drainage and retention to wider flood protection, with funded maintenance, Treat mangroves and wetlands as protective infrastructure, Turn forecasts into neighbourhood-level warnings with clear evacuation triggers, Make livelihood recovery part of disaster finance, Include climate mobility in housing and economic planning, and Finance delivery through costed agreements between federal and coastal state governments.
The paper concludes that the 2026 wet season has already supplied the warning. The test, it says, is whether data, forecasts, drainage, ecosystem protection and household recovery can be joined before the next high-risk window becomes the next disaster.
