EFFECT OF FLOODING ON LIVELIHOOD OF COMMUNITIES IN MUWO DISTRICT, MOKWA LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, NIGER STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

Flooding in Nigeria has been reported to affect and render people homeless than any other natural disaster. Muwo district is one of the adversely affected districts in Nigeria owing to its geographical location and many other factors. Unfortunately, there is dearth of literature on the effect of flood in the district; therefore this paper was aimed at assessing the effect of flooding on livelihood in the district. 125 questionnaires were administered and analyzed. Standardized precipitation index (SPI) was used to assess the trend of the occurrence of flooding the past 30years. The geographical information system (GIS) was used to analyze the terrain. The result revealed that among the underlying causes of flooding, 77% of respondent agreed that the release of water from kainji dam was the main cause of flooding in the area, while 23% attributed the flooding to excessive rainfall. As evidence from the standard precipitation index, excessive rainfall is not the cause of flooding in the district but the release of water from kainji dam. The result shows that there was a great loss of agricultural product worth millions of naira. There was a significant increase of loss with an increase in farm size (R2=0.98). The SPI result indicated that years in the 1995 and 2007 recorded the highest amount of rainfall which made them very wet years. The year 2008 was moderately wet year. The year 2015 and 1988 were found to be moderately dry and extremely dry respectively. The findings indicated that there were 22 near normal years. Migration was found to be the major coping strategy adopted by the communities. The terrain analysis indicated that 639.29sq.mi, 880.83sq.mi and 155.37sq.mil where found to be highly vulnerable, moderately vulnerable and less vulnerable to flooding.