“Climate change and recent severe flooding in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria”

Abstract

This paper considered the phenomenon of climate change in relation to frequent and intensified flood problems in Uyo, the Capital City of Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. Empirical evidence on the onset of climate change in Nigeria was presented. Flood problems worldwide were highlighted, together with their impacts in terms of deaths, economic losses and associated human sufferings. To this end, a detailed rainfall analysis was conducted for the study area, Uyo, using statistical distributions commonly deployed to describe climate states, such as the mean, the running mean, the standard deviation, coefficient of variability, skewness, and kurtosis, as well as, parametric statistics such as Kruskal-Wallis test and ANOVA. Results showed that recent rainfall amounts and patterns in Uyo were out of step with long-term mean conditions. For instance the 2005-2014 mean rainfall was 22% above the 30-year mean from 1985 to 2014. The rainfall Skewness and Kurtosis showed significant swings in the central tendency and confirmed the establishment of a new mean and a new standard deviation in the 2005-2014 decade. These trends were further confirmed to be statistically significant by Post Hoc Test at the 0.05 level. The implication of these findings is that rainfall is adding more water to surface runoff, leading to incessant, severe flood conditions. Although some effort has been made to reduce the incidence of flooding in Uyo through the provision of drains and storm sewers (pipe-jacking), a lot more needs to be done in terms of provision of infiltration surfaces (green areas) through sustainable urban renewal programme. Climate change mitigation options such as reducing gas flaring, bush burning, and fossil fuel combustion are recommended.

Causes and Effects of Flooding in Nigeria: A Review

“…They equally suggested proper channelization of Calabar urban drainage system, stringent flood control legislation, and development control measures that will play positive roles in mitigating the challenges of flooding. Ekpoh (2015) assessed climate change and recent severe flooding in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State. He designed a detailed rainfall analysis for Uyo using statistical distributions commonly deployed to describe climate states, such as the mean, the running mean, the standard deviation, coefficient of variability, skewness, and kurtosis.…”

“…Basically, in recent decades, flooding has led to the loss of thousands of lives and properties. According to available studies, flooding in Nigeria is caused by weak implementation of planning policies, streams and channel obstruction due to indiscriminate waste disposal habits and human activities in flood plains (Ituenet al, 2014;Ekpoh, 2015;Udoh, 2015 andEvan et al, 2017;Abraham et al, 2021). Specifically, flooding has affected the lives, properties and sustainability of the environment as noted in available studies.…”

Implications of Climate Change for Human Health in Nigeria

“…From a pre-industrial level of 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv), carbon dioxide, for instance, increased to 380 ppmv by 2005; an increase of about 40 per cent. The projection for 2015 level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was put at 400 ppmv [5]. It should be stated here that the preponderance of greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere is responsible for the formation of a gas layer in the troposphere called the greenhouse gas layer.…”

“…Therefore, the focus of this section is on scientific studies with empirical evidence. Studies have shown that Nigeria is already in the thick of climate change [5,7,8,9,10,11,12]. In a study that involved 30 meteorological stations and 105 years of observation, [13] carried out long-term temperature analysis and the result showed that the mean temperature for Nigeria since 1901 remained steady until the late 1960s when it started a gradual rise that has continued to the present time, in response to global warming.…”

“…Thereafter, the entire crisis is swept under the carpet without attending to the underlying factors that might have caused the problem in the first instance, and there is no concerted effort to prevent a reoccurrence. The serious concern about this approach of emergency response is that it keeps the impacted community in perpetual cycle of fear, misery and poverty, while making the government to look insensitive and incompetent [15,5]. Policy responses to the 2010, 2011 and 2012 flood disasters in Nigeria are still very fresh in our minds.…”