The aim of the study is to examine the pattern and process of environmentally-induced
deprivation among rural dwellers and the policy initiatives for its mitigation in rural areas of
Borno State. The specific objectives of the study are to: (i) identify the environmental factors
that account for variation in rural deprivation; (ii)delineate the pattern of environmentallyinduced
deprivation; (iii)explain how environmental factors engender deprivation; and (iv)
identify the coping strategies of rural inhabitants for mitigating deprivation.
To achieve the objectives, the major data required in addition to the socio-demographic
characteristics of the respondents include the effects of physical and social elements such as
temperature, high rainfall, soil fertility, electricity, health facilities, transportation on the
respondents; the varied manifestation of these phenomena in different households across the
sampled villages in selected local government areas; how physical and social elements interact
to incite deprivation; and, the different policy intervention and rural people’s strategies for
ameliorating deprivation. Primary sources of data were questionnaire survey and interview
schedules and participatory rural appraisal techniques. Secondary data such as number of
hospital beds, number of beneficiaries of government’s aids, numbers of wells and boreholes
per LGA were extracted from Borno State statistical yearbooks and Borno State Emergency
Relief Agency. The variables examined include yield of staple crops, loss of livestock, reduced
fish catch, access to biomass resources, destruction from flood, destruction from storm, conflict
over environmental resources, access to hygienic water supply, access to electricity, health-care
and transport infrastructure. Adopting a systematic sampling technique, data were gathered
from 630 respondents from 9 LGAs and 63 rural settlements using. PRA techniques were also
employed with 300 participants. Focus group discussions and force-field analysis through a
local game called “Na daya a tapa” were used to identify elements that provoke and mitigate
deprivation. Percentage and tabulation were used for summarizing data on socioeconomic
attributes and effects of environmental factors on basic needs of respondents. Factor analysis
was used to reduce the dataset and the loadings used to map the pattern of deprivation based on
settlements while the composite values of Z-score analysis were used to delineate the pattern of
deprivation based on LGAs.
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The study reveals that the elements with significant impact on deprivation are water,
soil, pest and diseases, electricity, transport facilities and health infrastructures. For instance
about 80.79% of the respondents suffered hunger from reduced harvest of staple crops, while
another 42.85% experience loss of shelter from ravages of flood, and 44.9% suffered
deprivation from storm. As high as 77.3% of respondents did not have access to electricity, also
86.1% did not have access to 50 litres of water per capita day. Also, a high correlation was
observed between ecological characteristics of rural areas such as low rainfall, rugged relief,
poor soil and so on and deprivation of basic needs of life. The factor loadings revealed an
interconnection between deprivation and four clusters of environmental factors labeled as
natural disaster index of deprivation, population pressure and physical ecology factors, social
and physical infrastructure factor and utility infrastructure index of rural deprivation. These
four clusters account for 84.53% of the total variance. An observable trend is that rural dwellers
in sampled settlements in Borno North are deprived suffer relative deprivation from poor
harvest of staple crops, reduced fish catch, and, conflict over resources. In contrast, rural
dwellers from sampled settlements in Borno South experience deprivation largely from impact
of flood, rugged terrain, lack of electricity, inaccessibility to health facilities and transport
infrastructure. By and large, this marked disparity underscores the explanation of political
economy theory and ecological incapacity as espoused by the ecosystem theory.
The major adaptive strategies were praying to God, migration, wild food harvesting and
“soil on rock” farming. On the whole, deprivation suffered by rural dwellers outweighs the
policy and adaptive strategies at mitigating them. Based on the findings, some of the
recommendations were the need to include drought, resource depletion, and conflict over
environmental resources in disasters for which government should provide relief, a complete
overhauling of rural infrastructure, and empowering rural dwellers on participatory
environmental management The foregoing leads to the conclusion that the environment in the
diverse ways it provoke deprivation can no longer be disregarded in policies for improving the
quality of life at the local level towards reducing the effects of socio-spatial disadvantages and
environmental burdens borne by rural dwellers