Urban Floods Mitigation Measures in Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria

Abstract

Most natural disasters are natural processes which become hazardous to us when we live close to a potential danger. Processes like fire, flood, drought, landslide, etc combine to cause loss of life and damage to our properties. In Ado-Ekiti, flood is becoming the most environmental challenge menacing the metropolis as many of her parts experience flood regularly most especially during and after rains. Many efforts have been made to discover the major causes of such floods, but little has been done to advance mitigating measures. This paper, therefore, looks at the issues of flood disaster mitigating measures in a sustainable manner. Both primary and secondary data were sourced to enhance the documentation of the socio-economic and environmental implications as well as mitigating measures of the urban floods in the metropolis. Simple statistical methods were employed in the analysis. Results reveal that flood is becoming the most devastating natural disaster in Ado-Ekiti, claiming more property damages. Floods though not leading in terms of claiming lives but it affects and displaces more people than any other disasters. Mitigation measures such as proper monitoring and enactment of laws forbidden people building structures on flood prone areas of the metropolis; demolition and relocation of existing illegal structures in the area; construction of good drainage system among others are suggested.

Keywords: Urban Floods, Disaster, Mitigation Measures, Metropolis.