Impact of extreme climate events on poverty in Nigeria: a case of the 2012 flood

Abstract

This study analysed the impact of the 2012 flood that occurred in Nigeria on households’ chance of entering into poverty, using a panel analysis of covariance model and data from the Nigerian General Household Survey of 2011 and 2013. The result of the analyses showed that though the 2012 flood did not significantly affect the per capita expenditure of all the surveyed households, it may have significantly decreased the per capita expenditure of households located in the flood affected areas and were heavily dependent on agriculture for their income. More so, the effects were not uniform across the households as the result showed that the effects were more on female-headed households compared to male-headed households, and more on households that had no access to credit compared to those that had access to credit. These lead to the recommendation that efforts should be made to integrate adaptation to climate change into poverty alleviation/eradication programmes in the country by ensuring that farmers prone to flood and other extreme climate-related disasters have access to finance. They should also be trained on how to build resilience, adaptive, anticipatory and absorptive capacity to climate change, giving priority to female-headed household that earn their living from agriculture.