Hostname: page-component-669899f699-7xsfk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-05-01T21:58:42.561Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Deep Waters: Flooding and the Climate of Suffering in Nigeria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2024

Daniel E. Agbiboa*
Affiliation:
Harvard University, USA

Abstract

This article focuses on the everyday emotions of the populations impacted by the 2022 flood in Nigeria by exploring the affectivities embodied in flooding and the unfurlings of political emotions and agency in these dire circumstances. By foregrounding the everyday emotions of flooding, I address a subject that too often is overlooked in political science, too often shunted to the margins of politics. I advance knowledge of the disparate impacts of flooding on the vulnerable and how these survivors are improvising affective ways of negotiating a complex emergency that spared their lives but left them in a state of injury.

Type
Special Issue on Climate Change and Vulnerable Populations
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Adams, Vincanne. 2013. Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith: New Orleans in the Wake of Katrina. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Adebayo, Bukola. 2018. “Nigeria Overtakes India in Extreme Poverty Ranking.” CNN, June 26.Google Scholar
Adelekan, Ibidun O. 2010. “Vulnerability of Poor Urban Coastal Communities to Flooding in Lagos, Nigeria.” Environment & Urbanization 22 (2): 433–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adetayo, Ope. 2022. “Nigerian Flood Victims Decry Government’s Response to Disaster.” Aljazeera, October 25.Google Scholar
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. 2020. “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Nigeria Is Murdering its Citizens.” New York Times, October 21.Google Scholar
Agbiboa, Daniel E. 2018. “Conflict Analysis in ‘World-Class’ Cities: Urban Renewal, Informal Transport Workers, and Legal Disputes in Lagos.” Urban Forum 29:118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ahmed, Sara. 2005. “The Politics of Bad Feeling.” Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association Journal 1:7285.Google Scholar
Amnesty International. 2023. Amnesty International Report 2022/23: The State of the World’s Human Rights. London: Amnesty International.Google Scholar
Auyero, Javier. 2012. Patients of the State: The Politics of Waiting in Argentina. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Berlant, Lauren. 2007. “Nearly Utopian, Nearly Normal: Post-Fordist Affect in La Promesse and Rosetta.” Public Culture 19 (2): 273301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berlant, Lauren. 2011. Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Bradford, Roisin A., et al. 2012. “Risk Perception: Issues for Flood Management in Europe.” Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences 12 (7): 2299–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burridge, Kenelm. 1995. Mambu: A Melanesian Millennium. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chabal, Patrick. 2009. Africa: The Politics of Suffering and Smiling. London: Zed Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chabal, Patrick, and Daloz, Jean-Pascal. 1999. Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Croitoru, Lelia, Miranda, Juan José, and Sarraf, Maria. 2019. “The Cost of Coastal Zone Degradation in West Africa: Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, and Togo.” Washington, DC: World Bank.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daily Trust . 2022. “Rains, Pains: Inside Nigeria’s Recurring Flood Menace.” October 8.Google Scholar
Di Nunzio, Marco. 2019. The Act of Living: Street Life, Marginality and Development in Urban Ethiopia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doocy, Shannon, Daniels, Amy, Murray, Sarah, and Kirsch, Thomas D.. 2013. “The Human Impact of Floods: A Historical Review of Events 1980–2009 and Systematic Literature Review.” PLoS Currents, April 16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunlop, Melissa, Negro, Gaia Del, De Munck, Katrien, Gale, Ken, Mackay, Susan Moir, Price, Mark, Sakellariadis, Artemi, Soler, Gabriel, Speedy, Jane, and Van Hove, Geert. 2021. “Something Happened in the Room: Conceptualizing Intersubjectivation.” International Review of Qualitative Research 14 (1): 6786.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DW . 2022. “Nigeria Grapples with Catastrophic Flooding.” October 23. www.dw.com/en/nigeria-grapples-with-catastrophic-flooding/a-63492200.Google Scholar
Earth Observatory. 2012. “Flooding in Nigeria.” October 16.Google Scholar
Faraclas, Nicholas. 2021. “Naija: A Language of the Future.” In Current Trends in Nigerian Pidgin English, ed. Akande, Akinmade T. and Salami, Oladipo, 1039. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Guyer, Jane I. 2017. “When and How Does Hope Spring Eternal in Personal and Popular Economics? Thoughts from West Africa to America.” In The Economy of Hope, ed. Miyazaki, Hirokazu and Swedberg, Richard, 147–71. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Hage, Ghassan. 2009. “Waiting out the Crisis: On Stuckedness and Governmentality.” In Waiting, ed. Hage, Ghassan, 97106. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Susanna, and Oliver-Smith, Anthony (eds.). 2002. Catastrophe and Culture: The Anthropology of Disaster. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press.Google Scholar
Jaafar, Jaafar. 2018. “Sokoto Flood Victims Stage Protest over Alleged Neglect by Tambuwal Administration.” Daily Nigerian, August 24.Google Scholar
Jansen, Stef. 2014. “Hope For/Against the State: Gridding in a Besieged Sarajevo Suburb.” Ethnos 79 (2): 238–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jawad, Ashar. 2023. “20 Most Religious Countries in the World.” Yahoo Finance, August 14.Google Scholar
Jones, Mayeni. 2022. “Nigerian Floods: Braving the Rising Waters in Kogi State.” BBC News, October 14.Google Scholar
Kaba, Mariame. 2020. “Hope Is a Discipline.” Towards Freedom, September 17.Google Scholar
Katz, Jack. 2001. How Emotions Work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Khalid, Ishaq, and Maishman, Elsa. 2022. “Nigerian Floods: ‘Overwhelming’ Disaster Leaves More Than 600 People Dead.” BBC News, October 16.Google Scholar
Kopnina, Helen, and Shoreman-Ouimet, Eleanor (eds.). 2017. Routledge Handbook of Environmental Anthropology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kuti, Fela. 1975. “Water No Get Enemy.” Expensive Shit album. https://afrobeatdrumming.com/looking-up-the-epic-tune-of-fela-kutis-water-no-get-enemy.Google Scholar
Lupton, Deborah. 2013. “Risk and Emotion: Towards an Alternative Theoretical Perspective.” Health, Risk and Society 15 (8): 634–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mbukusa, Nchindo R. 2015. “Understanding Indigenous Coping Strategies of the Basubiya on the Flooded Plains of the Zambezi River.” In Indigenous Knowledge of Namibia, ed. Chensembu, Kazhila C., 241–62. Windhoek, Namibia: UNAM Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McEwen, Lindsey, Garde-Hansen, Joanne, Holmes, Andrew, Jones, Owain, and Krause, Franz. 2016. “Sustainable Flood Memories, Lay Knowledges and the Development of Community Resilience to Future Flood Risk.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 42 (1): 1428.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
New Telegraph . 2021. “Every State in Nigeria on Its Own Today, Says Niger SSG Matane.” November 28.Google Scholar
Obadare, Ebenezer. 2021. “A Hashtag Revolution in Nigeria.” Current History 120 (826): 183–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peace, Adrian. 1979. “Lagos Factory Workers and Urban Inequality.” Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice 2:1837.Google Scholar
Princewill, Nimi, and Madowo, Larry. 2022. “Displaced by Devastating Floods, Nigerians Are Forced to Use Floodwater Despite Cholera Risk.” CNN, October 26.Google Scholar
Simone, AbdouMaliq. 2001. “On the Worlding of African Cities.” African Studies Review 44 (2): 1541.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Daniel Jordan. 2022. Every Household Its Own Government: Improvised Infrastructure, Entrepreneurial Citizens, and the State in Nigeria. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
The Cable . 2023. “How Nigeria’s Worst Flooding in a Decade Exposed Persons with Disabilities to Risks.” January 4.Google Scholar
United Nations. 2023. “Climate-Change–Induced Sea-Level Rise Direct Threat to Millions Around the World, Secretary-General Tells Security Council.” February 14.Google Scholar
Voice of America. 2022. “Nigerian Floods Kill More Than 600, Slows Shipment of Essentials.” October 18. www.voanews.com/a/nigerian-floods-kill-over-600-slows-shipments-of-essentials-/6795838.html.Google Scholar
Williams, Gavin. 1980. “Political Consciousness among the Ibadan Poor.” In State and Society in Nigeria, ed. Williams, Gavin, 110–20. Idanre, Nigeria: Afrgrafika Publishers.Google Scholar
World Economic Forum. 2022. “Flood Risks Affect Over a Billion People: Climate Change Could Make It Worse.” September 9.Google Scholar
Zombobah, Felix Gabriel. 2020. “Suffering and Smiling: The Nigerian Experience.” IGWEBUIKE: African Journal of Arts and Humanities 6 (5): 343–51.Google Scholar