Flooding and household preparedness in Benin City, Nigeria

Abstract

Flooding is a major environmental hazard in Nigerian urban centers that has defiled solution. The vulnerable nature of these urban centers is compounded by the tropical climate, rapid deforestation, unplanned growth, non-engineered constructions coupled with encroachment on flood prone areas. Flood disasters are major threats to human-beings and reverse major developmental processes in any locality, hampering socio/economic activities. Household preparedness mitigates the impacts of flood on vulnerable populations. Preparedness and mitigation phases occur as improvements are made in anticipation of flood disasters. Thus household ability to prepare for flood disasters is very crucial in the immediate response and long-term recovery phases. The paper examined Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in the light of household preparedness in Benin City, Nigeria. The study's findings confirm that there is no household preparedness in relation to flood and 95% of the respondents indicated that their religious believe system is a major governing factor to the none utilization of preparedness as a response to any disaster. The ANOVA test shows that there is a significant difference among households in terms of their flood disaster preparedness. A multiple correlation analysis indicated that religious belief and lack of funds determine household preparedness as these two variables explain the highest variance in the socio economic factors influencing utilization of flood disaster preparedness measures. The study recommends the exploration of household preparedness as first mitigation strategy in the light of the hopeless nature exhibited by households in events of flood disasters. Sensitization of households on the need for saving money towards ameliorating flood impact is needed while strengthening institutional preparedness targeted at disaster risk reduction.