Flooding and Welfare of Fishers' Households in Lagos State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined the effect of flooding on the fishing households' welfare in Lagos State. Data were collected with the aid of structured questionnaire to elicit information from 412 fishers selected through a multistage random sampling technique. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, budgetary technique and inferential statistics. Results revealed that rainfall was the dominant climatic factor that had adverse effect on the fishing communities as 81.1% of the respondents experienced loss in income due to flooding. This occurred during the raining season between May and August. Generally, respondents have higher net income during high season when there is less likelihood of flooding than at low season. This implies that during the high season when the volume of water is low, fish catch is high. The mean income for the fishers that use boat technology during low and high seasons are N51,032.38 and N105,619.47 respectively and are significantly different at 1 percent (p<0.01) The income of fishers that use motorized technology for the low and high seasons are N60,950 and N131,440 and also significantly different at 1 percent (p<0.01). The estimated parameters from the regression analysis shows that household size, membership of association, access to credit and proportion of loss due to flooding were the significant factors explaining fishers' welfare in the study area. The study revealed that fishers employed different coping strategies such as moving permanently or relocating temporarily to another fishing site where there is no flooding to mitigate loss of income as a result of flooding.