Impact of Flooding in Delta State: A Sociocultural Perspective

Abstract

Flooding is one of the most devastating natural disasters in the world, claiming more lives and causing more property damage than any other natural phenomena. Some of the impact of the flooding incident includes socioeconomic, impact of flooding in agriculture, loss of properties and changes in the mode of transportation and the sociocultural implication of flooding on the people. The concept of flooding could be explained using different theories. For the purpose of this paper, Resilience and Functionalist theories where employed to this study. The study adopted a descriptive survey design. Three Hundred and Ninety-Seven (n = 397) participated in the study in a combination of cluster and purposive sampling techniques across the three communities using an instrument of questionnaire for data collection. Focus group discussions and interview were conducted in each of the selected clans in order to ascertain questions related to the objectives of the study. The findings of the study reveal that flooding have significant socio – cultural effect on the people in the study area. Notwithstanding the negative effects, the people were not willing to abandon their ancestral land for socio – cultural reasons of attachments to their traditional home and pattern of livelihoods. The findings reveal that in flooding event, families and communities relax some social and cultural demands on various rites of passage. The people have innovated and adopted a couple of survival strategies that make them adaptable to the occurrence of floods in the study area. Based on the findings of the study, the following recommendations are made: that government should prepare for arising social change that may occur on the social institution due to future flooding and device alternative means to ensure that the sociocultural dysfunction
effect caused by flood does not cause a collapse on the social system. Also, there should be more awareness programs on flood adaptation rather than flood control mechanisms, because natural disasters like flood most often do not have permanent solutions.