Effects of Seasonal Flooding in Benin City and the need for a Community-Based Adaptation Model in Disaster Management in Nigeria

The present study aimed to investigate the effects of hydrologically induced environmental problem in Benin City and how communities (considered as non-state actors) can be sustainably integrated/participate in monitoring of environmental change, disaster preparedness, post disaster management mechanisms and influence water resources development/management decisions. The study focused on the seasonal flood events of years 2016 and 2017. The study showed that the impacts of flooding in Benin City ranges from submergence of physical infrastructures, loss of agricultural lands/ farms. Using the Focused Group Discussion and Interview methods, 61.9% of flood affected persons agreed that their houses were submerged, 80.5% indicated that their farms, including fish farms, piggery, snail farms, crops and poultry were damaged by floods, 9.6%, indicated having experienced food stock losses due to floods. Most common diseases/sicknesses experienced were diarrhoea (27%), malaria (37%); cough (20%), while sickness due to snake bite was the least (4%). Fe and fecal coli form count values were high during seasonal flood event. Most of the hydraulic regulation projects have failed mainly due to poor feasibility study, inadequacy of hydrological data, non-involvement of relevant stakeholder and the complete absence of community based groups during engineering construction works. The study proposed a State-Non-state actors Integrated Model, which will be registered as a Corporate organization to plan and monitor environmental changes relating to climate change, flood and gully erosion disasters and with the active involvement of NEMA, SEMA, LEMA and other related agencies and NGO. Depending on the size of each Local Government Area in Benin, the proposed committee will comprise of 25-50 members. The study recommends capacity building of members in the form of training and re-training in the areas of early warning, preparedness, adaptation, emergency plan, data collection method/analysis, writing of research grants proposals to fund the activities of the committee and monitoring for environmental changes.