Principal component analysis of the effects of flooding on food security in agrarian communities of south eastern Nigeria

Flooding is a general condition of partial or complete inundation of normally dry areas from overflow of inland or tidal waters or from unusual and rapid accumulation of runoff.1 Floods as noted by Odufuwa et al.2 are the most frequent disaster and widespread natural hazards of the world and UN-Water3 noted that, floods have caused 84% disaster deaths in the world with an average of 20,000 deaths per year, which makes only a few countries immune to floods. The growing flood scenarios in different parts of the world have resulted in loss of human lives, displacement of people, loss in properties and general damage to the environment and Madzwamuse,4 Speranza,5 & Nzeadibe et al.,6 have noted developing countries to be the most vulnerable to these impacts due to their low adaptive capacity. Consequently, Nigerian flood damage records show that many people have lost their lives to flooding while hundreds of thousands have been rendered homeless and properties worth billions of Naira have been destroyed as a result of devastating floods across Nigeria.1,7‒9 These floods usually occur in three forms in Nigeria, viz; urban flooding, coastal flooding and river flooding and urban flooding.10 The occurrence of floods in Nigeria is not a recent phenomenon,11‒16 Incidences of destructive floods have been recorded in different parts of Nigeria, for instance, the floods that occurred in Ibadan (1985, 1987, 1990, 2011), Osogbo (1992, 1996, 2002), Yobe (2000), Akure (1996, 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006), Makurdi in 2008, Sokoto in 2010, Ogbaru and Oguta in 2012. In addition, the coastal cities of Lagos, Yenegoa, Calabar, Uyo, Port Harcourt and Warri frequently experience floods.16‒19 Of all these floods the most devastating had been noted to be the August-October 2012 in Nigeria which pushed rivers over their banks and submerged hundreds of kilometres of urban and rural lands20 with an estimate of over 7,705,378 Nigerians affected by the floods leaving 2,157,419 persons internally displaced (IDPs). Moreover, over 90% of the 36 States of the country were affected between July and October, 2012 with 363 deaths and more than 618,000 damaged houses.21 It was also noted to have caused massive destruction of farmlands which resulted to food insecurity in parts of the country as significant proportion of areas (including the south eastern region) that produce the three main tuber food crops in Nigeria (namely yam, cassava and sweet potato), were affected by the floods.22,23 Food security, according to FAO.24,25 exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Food security in the above context consists of four dimensions viz; food availability, accessibility, utilization and stability. Food accessibility is a measure of the ability to obtain/secure food, usually determined by affordability of food and money spent on food while food availability is determined by sufficiency of food that are produced, stored, processed, distributed and exchanged. In addition, food utilization refers to the essential nutrients secured from the food consumed including access to potable water and safety of food and stability emphasizes the importance of having to reduce the risk of adverse effects on the other three dimensions: food availability, food accessibility or food utilization over time; it deals with the phrase “at all times” in the food security definition by FAO.25 A state of food insecurity would occur once any of the food security dimensions is truncated by flooding, drought or any environmental change, hence, there exist a relationship between flooding and food (in)security. Since Ramakrishna et al.,26 & Zakari et al.,27 found flooding to have significant negative impacts on food security in Khammam (India) and Niger Republic respectively, there was need to assess the aspects in which flooding affect food security in the agrarian and flood vulnerable communities in the south eastern region of Nigeria. Extensive works had been carried out on the effects of flooding on health and environment in Nigeria ranging from destruction of roads and other infrastructure, stream pollution, coastal erosion, destruction of farms to loss of lives and property.2,8,9,15,28‒32. Yet, there is dearth of literature on the extent of negative effects of flooding of food security directly or indirectly in the study area. Thus, this study examined the negative effects of flooding on food security both directly and indirectly as well as summarized them under key