Disaster Vulnerability and Resilience of Urban Residents: A Case of Rainstorm Disaster Risk Management in Bida, Nigeria

Abstract

Rainstorm disaster is one of the challenges facing a growing number of settlements in Nigeria. Either in rural or urban centres, this environmental catastrophe, has become a recurring and increasingly formidable disaster negatively affecting socio-economic activities. The reduction of the risk and the negative effects of rainstorm disaster has long been a major concern to the residents of Bida in Niger State – central Nigeria. Using on-the-spot assessments and Descriptive Statistical Analysis (DSA), this work highlighted the effectiveness of disaster relief strategies available to victims of recurrent rainstorm events; the various structural damages occasioned by increasing vulnerability to negative effects of climate change related disasters. On-the-spot field finding shows that this disaster negatively affects all areas of human abode and livelihood in the city. Mitigation strategies mostly employed by low-income urban dwellers that constitute majority of the victims, are not only ineffective for addressing hydro-meteorological disasters, but also known to compound peculiar emergency situations occasioned by disasters. In order to effectively tackle these catastrophic events, urban and regional governments need to intervene meaningfully at all levels of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) including disaster risk prevention and management. The present practice of providing food items and household utensils as disaster relief materials to disaster stricken and traumatized urban poor can hardly prevent the reoccurrence or reduce the inevitable impacts of future disasters.

Keywords: environment / low-income / rainstorm disaster / risks / urban areas