Indigenous Knowledge Early Warning Signs For Flood Disaster Risk Reduction In Kaduna Town, Nigeria

This paper unveils how indigenous knowledge is employed in the prediction of flood disaster prevalence in Kaduna Town, Nigeria. The study adopts a qualitative phenomenological case study approach as it relates to the floodplain resident’s experiences. The data for the study was collected through semi-structured interviews (n-30) conducted with the residents of the floodplain of Kaduna Town. The generated data was imported into Nvivo 11 qualitative data analysis software for the purpose of coding. After the coding was undertaken the results was then transferred to Microsoft Excel 2016 in order to produce the chart for the discussion of this study. Based on the analysis of the data, it was inferred that indigenous knowledge flood early warning signs are perceived in three distinctive ways in the study area via nature, water observation, and the weather. Hence, this indeed concretized that indigenous knowledge depends on the peculiarity of a given locality. However, the study concluded by recommending that indigenous knowledge flood early warning signs in Kaduna Town should be integrated with other conventional approaches of flood prediction such as the scientific technologies in order to make flood prediction robust and more effective.