The alarm sounded last week by the Governor of Katsina state, Alhaji Aminu Bello Masari, to the effect that his domain is losing about five kilometres to desertification annually once again calls for an urgent action to put the dangerous trend in check. He called for greater attention to address the alarming situation.
Masari raised the concern while commissioning the Green Project initiated by Yusuf Bala Usman College of Legal and General Studies, Daura. He lamented that what “remains as forest in the state are simply shrubs and grasses”, noting that the adverse effects are manifesting already and urged the citizens to embrace the culture of tree planting to mitigate the problems.
In her remarks, the Provost of the college, Prof. Sa’adiyya Sani Daura, said the project was conceived in view of its economic potential expected to provide about 300 people with 100,000 seedlings of eucalyptus to be planted and monitored. It would also include raising seedlings and setting up an orchard that had already been planted, among which are mango, cashew, guava, moringa, Indian lime, orange and date palm.
However, Katsina state is not the only location in the far North that is imperiled by desertification. Other frontline states like Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kano, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara that fall within the Sudano-Sahelian zone are at the mercy of the menace.
Desertification has been a critical challenge facing the above-listed states. In 2012, the immediate past administration approved the immediate implementation of the Great Green Wall Programme as a deliberate policy to combat desert encroachment in Nigeria, particularly in the northern part of the country.
The programme aims at planting more than 1,500 new trees from Maiduguri in Borno state to Birnin-Kebbi in Kebbi state, a distance of more than 1, 000 kilometres. Observers noted that the initiative would boost efforts at tackling the growing menace of deforestation and desertification in the country.
To guarantee its effective implementation, it was expected that the programme would be jointly funded by the three tiers of government, stakeholders, development partners, the private sector and civil society organisations on mutually agreed terms under the supervision of the National Council on Shelterbelt and Afforestation, with an implementation unit set up within the Federal Ministry of Environment to coordinate the project’s execution.
It is, however, worrisome that about half a decade down the road, the Great Green Wall has remained pregnable by what some experts have described as the earth’s malignant cancer which is steadily consuming more than 350,000 sq. km of its forest landmass each year. The negative impact of desertification and deforestation in other parts of the country has started taking its toll on the lives of humans, animals and plants particularly in the 11 frontline states.
Environmentalists, however, insist that for the Great Green Wall programme to be more meaningful, the citizens ought to be actively mobilised to imbibe the culture of tree-planting and tree-nurturing, stressing that concerted efforts should also be geared towards the conservation of the ecosystem.
The grave consequences of desertification are already manifesting in the migration of herders from the frontline states to other parts of the country with good vegetation to feed their animals, throwing up bloody clashes with farmers. Also manifesting is the low level of farming activities in the affected axis, consequently posing a threat to food security and leading to loss of means of livelihood of more than 70 per cent of the youth.
Frustrated by the stealthy nature of the scourge, some concerned members of the National Assembly from Yobe state in 2012 called for the establishment of a Desertification Control Commission (DCC) as a potent instrument to fight the menace on a sustainable basis. Unfortunately, that noble call has not received any attention at the National Assembly till date.
We recall that sometime last year, a member of the House of Representatives (Gagarawa, Gumel, Sule-Tankarkar and Maigatari federal constituency, Jigawa state), Hon. Sani Zoro, drew the attention of the federal government to the menace of desertification in his constituency. His lamentations seem to have fallen on deaf ears. There can be no better time than now for the lawmakers to revisit the issue as a matter of national emergency. As the saying goes, “a stitch in time saves nine”.
