More than 300,000 residents were displaced and dozens killed when a dam outside the city burst in September 2024, the ageing structure suddenly ripped apart after years of neglect and abnormally heavy rains.

The mass displacement added to the pressure Maiduguri was already under -- a city where tens of thousands of people were already living in camps or on the streets after fleeing militant groups Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province.

Today, many flood victims are little better off than they were a year ago.

Jidda and her nine children now live with a neighbour, crammed into a single room.

"When the flood came, everything we owned was destroyed," Jidda, 75, told AFP.

Her family was already destitute when the flood came, after her son, the main breadwinner, died.

She was eking out a living selling kola nuts, a traditional stimulant, but has been unable to raise the capital to restart her business since the disaster.

She now lives on the "kindness of neighbours".

- Home of the displaced -

Jidda first came to Maiduguri 11 years ago, running from jihadists, who since 2009 have been waging a war against the state in a bid to carve out their own caliphate.

She was among the few fortunate who could avoid the displacement camps. Her family purchased a two-bedroom house in the city's densely populated Gwange neighbourhood.

Aisha Ali Adamu, a 45-year-old widow, and her eight children have also been living on handouts from neighbours and local charities since she lost her home in the flood.

Her children have been out of school since last year.

"I can't afford school uniforms, books and writing materials for my children. We are struggling to find what to eat," said Adamu, who lost her groundnut oil extracting business to the torrent.

Even before the flood, children dropping out or never attending school was a major problem in Borno state, where some 700,000 kids in the state have no access to education.

Half of them have been displaced by jihadist violence, according to official figures.

Over the past decade, more than two million people have fled their homes in northeast Nigeria.

Many have sought refuge in Maiduguri as well as neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

Although Nigerian officials have been closing displaced person's camps and returning people to their deserted villages, Maiduguri is saturated with those unwilling to leave.

A jihadist attack in early September on returned Nigerians in the town of Darul Jamal, near the Cameroonian border, killed at least 63 people, underscoring their fears.

- Climate change -

Last year, Maiduguri recorded rainfall levels 43 percent above the annual average, according to the Nigerian Meteorological Agency.

The deluges repeatedly overwhelmed the city's clogged drainage systems and poorly planned neighbourhoods.

Climate change is intensifying extreme weather events across Nigeria and the current rainy season has left Maiduguri -- a city already battered by conflict, poverty and fragile infrastructure -- in "panic mode", said Abubakar Kawu Monguno, a geography professor at University of Maiduguri.

"We are living in constant fear. We hear the thunder and our hearts skip," said Ya-Chilla Mustapha, a 40-year-old mother of eight.

Nigeria's rainy season typically runs from the northern hemisphere spring through to October.

As of mid-September, a total of 232 persons have died across Nigeria from flooding that has displaced more than 121,000, according to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).

The official death toll is likely to be an undercount. A massive flood in Niger state in May left hundreds missing whose bodies were never recovered.

To prevent a recurrence of the flooding, NEMA has cleared blocked drainage and intensified information campaigns in Maiduguri, warning residents to stop building homes on waterways.

But for many, building in the wrong area is the least of their worries.

Yusuf Muhammad, a tyre mechanic, was never able to rebuild his home, despite receiving cash donations of 200,000 naira ($130) from the state government and the World Food Programme.

"The money was spent on feeding my family," said the 44-year-old, whose family of two wives and 14 children live in three tents on the land where his home once stood.

"I couldn't even start rebuilding my house."