In the last couple of years, there have been talks about food security for not just Nigeria, but the entire West African sub-region. However, with the relentless killings across the country, particularly in food-producing states, danger looms; BENJAMIN UMUTEME reports.
Agriculture is critical to economic development of any country due to its contribution to the growth and development of any economy.
It provides food and raw materials to the non-agricultural sectors of the economy, it provides employment opportunities to a vast majority of unemployed labour and serves as an avenue by which valuable foreign exchange can be earned through the export of agricultural products. But alas that is again changing!
Climate change as part driver of insecurity
Speaking at the engagement on contextualising Nigeria’s water resource management in mining and energy policies, the executive secretary of Global Rights Nigeria, Abiodun Baiyewu, had said water crisis poses one of the greatest threats to Nigeria’s national security.
According to him, the threat is already playing out and tearing at the very fabric of Nigeria’s nationhood with the many conflicts it is facilitating, but it is not reported.
He said, “The dramatic shrinking of Lake Chad in less than 40 years to 1/10th its size, the recent announcement of the shrinking of Goronyo dam in Sokoto to 1/10thits size as well, the rapidly shrinking Kaduna River, River Niger, and even River Benue; the literal overnight disappearance of the Kara market waterfront in Lagos, are all ominous signs of the fate of this natural resource in Nigeria – and it is true that it is largely due to climate change.
“Climate change comes at an inordinately great price for countries close to the equator, countries like Nigeria. The rapid drying up of our groundwater creating an arid belt in the North, the displacement of water bodies resulting in flooding in other parts of the country, the loss of our rainforest and biodiversity and rise in temperature are crowding the little land we have for the prosperity of our teeming population.”
Rewind to 17 years ago, when the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) delivered a report to the American Petroleum Institute (API), a trade association for the fossil fuel industry, which many globally took with a pinch of salt.
The report titled Sources, Abundance, and Fate of Gaseous Atmospheric Polluters is one of the earliest attempts by the industry to grapple with the impacts of rising CO2 levels, which Stanford’s researchers warned if left unabated “could bring about climatic changes” like temperature increases, melting of ice caps and sea level rise.
The result is obvious for all to see, rising sea levels with its attendant effects, increasing unpredictability of the weather, shrinking water bodies, drought, and desertification amongst others. However, the worse hit by the effect of all these is the Lake Chad!
The shrinking of Lake Chad, which provides food for over 40 million people in Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad and the disappearing natural resources of the water, has become a global calamity. This has led to displacement of millions of families that has relied on the water body for the survival of their families.
Regarded as one of the largest water bodies in Africa, the Lake Chad is fast losing its traction. The water level and size has shrunk by massive 90 per cent compared to what it was in the 1960s.
Its surface area has decreased from a peak of 25,000 square kilometres to approximately 1,350 square kilometres today.
Experts say there is already a 60 per cent decline in fish production, degradation of pasturelands, leading to shortage of dry matter estimated at 46.5 per cent in certain places in 2006, reduction in the livestock population, and threat to biodiversity, food and agriculture.
This has driven the population around the Basin downwards towards the vegetative areas of the North Central and Southern part of the country.
Even the River Niger has not been spared in this onslaught as many have been expressing worry as the River Niger shoreline recede.
However, the Global Rights executive secretary said, “The Boko Haram crisis, the herdsmen-pastoralist communities’ crises, the Kaduna crisis, and even the Zamfara massacres are all linked to Nigeria’s emerging water crisis. While we ascribe religious and ethnic colorations to them, we must all admit that an underlying currency in their fueling is access to water resources.
“These communities have lived together for centuries, but their rapid population growth, the dwindling of green areas and water bodies have introduced tensions not before encountered. As our population grows, these tensions will get worse.”
Renewed security challenges
From Boko Haram menace in the North-east, bandits in the North-west and herdsmen activities in the North-central and other parts of the country, the story of insecurity has never been this bad for the country’s farming population who reside mostly in the rural areas.
In August 2019, the federal government temporary closed its land borders because alleged that the country’s neighbours were encouraging the smuggling of goods and small weapons into the country. And in November, President Muhammadu Buhari approved the extension of the closure of land borders till January 31, 2020.
Despite this, the level of violence seemed to have increased astronomically. All over the country, there is no day that the media does not report one form of killing or the other.
According to Premium Times, a total number of 245 people were killed across the country in January, 2020.
For example, bandits have repeatedly invaded farming communities in Zamfara state, as well as Birnin Gwari in nearby Kaduna states, stealing cattle and kidnapping villagers for ransoms and leaving dead bodies behind them.
The gangs usually launch attacks from the vast Rugu forest which straddles Zamfara, Kaduna, Katsina and Niger states.
Most communities have formed vigilance groups to fight the bandits. Even the deployment of troops has failed to end the activities of the bandits, prompting the authorities to offer amnesty them in exchange for a fragile peace.
‘Losses, hard to estimate’
The loss is hard to estimate: Many thefts, especially those occurring in remote villages or forests with limited state security presence, go unreported. One report estimated that in 2013 more than 64,750 cattle were stolen and at least 2,991 herders killed in states across the north-central zone. From 2011 to 2015, bandits, cattle rustlers and other criminals killed 1,135 people in Zamfara state alone, according to the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC). Even economically it has been gloomy for farmers.
According to a 2015 study, the federal government was losing $13.7 billion in revenue annually because of herders, farmers’ conflicts in Benue, Kaduna, Nasarawa and Plateau states. The study found that on average these four states lost 47 per cent of their internally-generated revenues. In March 2017, Benue state Governor Samuel Ortom asserted that attacks by herders coming from more northerly states, and possibly also from Cameroon and Niger, had cost his state N95 billion (about $634 million at that time) between 2012 and 2014.
Nigeria on brink of food crisis
Speaking with our correspondent in a telephone interview, an economist and public affairs analyst, Friday Efih, Nigeria is on the brink of serious food crisis except the government acts fast.
“When you look at the farming states in the North East, North West and the North-central, you will discover that the farmers are now afraid to go to the farm for fear of being attacked and killed,” he said.
In a chat with Blueprint Weekend, Baiyewu said Nigerians were already feeling the impact of insecurity of food production as the price of food is already very expensive across the country.
According to him, except the federal government addresses the security issues the focus on agriculture will be futile.
“Benue particularly was the food basket, Jos Plateau was also basically farmlands, Borno produced the best fish and pepper across Nigeria. And because they lost all these, food security has been so badly endangered. Niger state produces a lot a lot of yams, but because of the skirmishes they are not producing as they used to.
“As much as government says it is focusing on agriculture, if it does not invest in the security and peace in the country; it does not invest in ensuring justice is felt by the poorest people in this country, our food security is in endangered.”
