The relevance of education in the lives of living beings can never be overemphasized. Likewise, the knowledge of impending disasters by people can go a long way to safeguard them from falling victim to disasters or mishaps of grave consequences. One of the ways to improve people’s knowledge of impending disaster is thus through education. Education helps in creating awareness about various risks around an environment thereby equipping people with what to look out for and possibly what to do to mitigate prevent or protect themselves from falling victim to disasters. Several types of research have established the importance of education in creating awareness in the mitigation of disasters, especially natural disasters. Education has also been shown to play a critical role in reducing the vulnerability of a people to disaster whether natural or technological, through enhancing their capacity to anticipate, cope with, resist, and recover from direct and indirect impacts of hazards. Education can also increase the adaptive capacity of the community and hence its resilience. The presence or not of adequate education and awareness in the community can make a huge difference in the outcomes of a disaster. It is against this background that we embarked on a study of the oil spill disaster in the Ogoni community of the Niger Delta particularly, the Bodo community; to ascertain how much community awareness and education were carried out? What effect, if any, did it have on the eventual outcome of the oil spill disaster? Our study examined the oil spill disaster of the Ogoni Community to identify approaches adopted, if any, by relevant entities in educating or creating awareness among the people to equip them with the relevant knowledge of what forms of hazards from oil spills to envisage and how to safeguard themselves from falling victim. In other words, what role did education play in creating awareness in the communities studied? To answer these questions. We relied on secondary data and the lived experience of the Bodo people, one of Ogoni communities involved in the oil spill disaster between 1950 and 1973. In doing this, we examined the strategies deployed to create awareness about the impact of oil spills on the economic, livelihood, social and cultural lifestyle of the Ogoni communities during the oil exploration, production, and transportation. we also examined the educational tools and methods employed to educate the people. Two theoretical standpoints were adopted to clarify the concept of education as a key component in awareness creation and the responsive ability of the community populace to information either in disaster management or otherwise. The findings from this research will result in recommendations for practitioners to better prepare vulnerable communities to deal with oil spill disasters and hence increase their resilience.

Authors: Mathew Abraham Ocholi, Joseph Abraham Ocholi

Published in: Canada International Conference on Education, 2024

• Date of Conference: 23-25 July, 2024
• DOI: 10.20533/CICE.2024.0012
• Electronic ISBN: 978-1-913572-65-5
• Conference Location: Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Canada