Assessment of Fisher Folk's Vulnerability to Poverty Due to Oil Spillage in Niger-Delta Region of Nigeria

The Niger Delta local communities have been negatively affected by oil and gas production operations and their livelihoods disrupted and disorganized rulting into poverty. The study therefore assessed fisherfolks’ vulnerability to poverty due to oil spillage in the Niger-Delta region of Nigeria. Data collected with the aid of a well-structured questionnaire from four hundred fisher folks selected through a multi-stage sampling technique were analyzed with Vulnerability as Expected Poverty Analysis and Logit Regression Model. Results showed that the average age of the sampled fisher folks was 40 years. Fishing was found to be a male dominated enterprise in the study area though with appreciable proportion (44.7%) of women involvement. Most (62.7%) of the fisher folks were educated and 86.0% still depended on informal sources of credit. Using vulnerability threshed of 0.5, 46.0% of the fishing households were vulnerable but the fishing households from oil bearing communities were however more vulnerable than those of oil impacting communities. The logit regression result showed that age, gender, household size, level of education, membership of cooperatives, fishing income, expenses on food, access to credit facilities, access to basic amenities, livelihood diversification, number of occurrence of oil spillage and location of occurrence of oil spillage significantly determined the fishing households’ vulnerability to poverty in the study area. It is recommended that a comprehensive package of strategies that will ensure functional basic amenities, effective social protection programmes and other better risk management policies should be given special focus by the government and non-government actors working in the Niger-Delta region as this is fundamental for mitigating vulnerability to poverty.