Which Areas Flood in Lokoja — and Which Roads
The parts of Lokoja that have gone under before — Adankolo, the Old Market waterfront, Ganaja Junction — the roads that get cut, and who issues the warnings.
Lokoja's flood does not come from rain falling on Lokoja. The Niger and the Benue arrive here already full, carrying weeks of rain from catchments hundreds of kilometres upstream and water released from dams — Lagdo in Cameroon on the Benue, Kainji and Jebba on the Niger. So the river can still be rising here long after the rain has stopped overhead, which is why the highest levels are recorded in October and November rather than in the middle of the rains.
A record of past floods, not a warning about today
Where the city floods
Pins show documented flood black-spots. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.
In Lokoja
Adankolo
A riverside neighbourhood just south of the town centre, named in flood reporting year after year. Residents of the New Adankolo layout, the part closest to the water, were carrying their belongings out of flooded houses in 2019, and in October 2024 residents here were photographed moving between submerged houses by canoe. St Luke's church in Adankolo has been used as a camp for families who had to leave home.
The Old Market, on Ahmadu Bello Way
The old waterfront market, on the road that runs along the riverbank through the old town. The riverine communities either side of it are named in the same reporting: a concrete boundary runs along the bank from Kabawa to Kpata, and journalists who walked it were told the water sometimes comes over the top of it.
Ganaja Junction
The junction behind the Federal University of Lokoja, where the road for Ganaja and Ajaokuta leaves town. Residents here date the damage to the 2012 flood. Further along the same road, closer to the river, is Ganaja village: one count after a flood put 176 displaced households there, and some families stay on in flooded houses because they have nowhere else to go.
Outside town, on the Abuja road
Koton Karfe
About 35 km north of Lokoja on the Abuja road, outside the town — the stretch where the Niger comes over the highway itself. Houses in Koton Karfe go under with it, the State High Court premises among them.
Roads that go under
The Abuja dual carriageway at Koton Karfe
The Niger overtops the carriageway here, about 35 km north of town. In October 2022 the federal controller of works in Kogi said the river had overflowed it and made it dangerous to road users, and sent Abuja-bound traffic from the south-west round by Ilorin–Mokwa–Bida and traffic from the east and south-south by Makurdi–Lafia. The same road crosses the floodplain past Gadumo, where a camp has sheltered displaced families. Not every delay on this stretch is the water: it produced a three-day jam in December 2025 at Koton Karfe, Ozi and Banda, with travellers stuck an average of about twelve hours a day.
The Lokoja–Ajaokuta road at Ganaja Junction
The link south and east. When the river is high the low part of the Ganaja road goes under and commuters cross it by canoe, the same scene the Abuja road produces at Koton Karfe.
Where the warnings come from
Emergency line
The free national emergency number, switched on in Kogi by the Nigerian Communications Commission. The number to ring when somebody is in danger from the water.
- Phone
- 112
Free from any phone.
KOSEMA — Kogi State Emergency Management Agency
The state agency that runs Kogi's flood response: it opens the camps for families who have to leave home and runs the state emergency operations centre. In September 2025 it opened 42 camps and listed 258 flood-prone communities across eight local government areas.
- Website
- kogistate.gov.ng
No telephone number for KOSEMA could be verified from an official source, so none is printed here. Its warnings and camp announcements go out through the state government, on local radio and in the papers.
NIHSA — Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency
The federal agency that reads the river. It publishes the Annual Flood Outlook before each season and the level warnings during it, from the gauge at the point where the Niger and the Benue meet.
- Website
- nihsa.gov.ng/flood-drought
No telephone number is published; the agency's own contact page carries a form instead.
NEMA — National Emergency Management Agency
The federal emergency agency, above the state one. Its headquarters is in Maitama, Abuja.
- Website
- nema.gov.ng/contact-us
Its contact page gives an address and an email address but lists no telephone number.
A map can’t see today’s water
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