The city of Maiduguri, in Nigeria, had been drought-stricken. Then the rains, amplified by climate change, began and wouldn’t stop, inundating homes and overwhelming a dam.

As torrential rains across Central and West Africa have unleashed the most catastrophic floods in decades, residents of Maiduguri, the capital of the fragile Nigerian state of Borno — which has been at the center of an Islamic extremists' insurgency — said they have seen it all.

Over four million people have been affected by flooding so far this year in West Africa, a threefold increase from last year, according to the UN