FLOOD AND POPULATION DISPLACEMENT IN THE NIGER DELTA

Abstract

Over the decades the Niger Delta region, which occupies about 70,000 km2 has been one of the most widely researched areas in the world. These scholarly attentions were focused more on such issues like oil spillage, gas flaring, environmental despoliation, resource control, derivation et cetera. Meanwhile, the region and its people had equally suffered neglect, want in
midst of plenty, alienation, dehumanization, exploitation, marginality and seeming acts of state-sponsored terrorism that 0/1 resulted in militancy and the consequent amnesty deal. However, the region currently, faces another threat, this time in the form of flood disaster. It is therefore this issue and its impacts on the people that this study seeks to interrogate. The study adopts the structural-functionalism theory as its theoretical framework of analysis. In its methodology, the study made use of both the primary and secondary sources of data collection. It also made use of both the quantitative and qualitative descriptive methods of data analysis. The study observed that the incidence of flooding in the area usually leave a soared taste in the mouths of many people through population displacement, destruction of property and means of livelihood, impoverishment and death. The study therefore, recommends for the institutionalization of a proactive flood management regime in the area as well as the proper funding, mobilization and repositioning of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) to
enable it respond effiCiently to incidence of flooding when and wherever it occursin the region.