Deforestation: The Charcoal Trade Mission

Like her fellow women in the black-dust-stain business, akin to the chimneysweep’s, sparse all over the popular charcoal market within a radius of tens of meters, her entire palm, portions of her body and her wrappers were stained by the dust of the commodity which guaranteed her and, perhaps, her entire family, livelihood. A popular […]

Like her fellow women in the black-dust-stain business, akin to the chimneysweep’s, sparse all over the popular charcoal market within a radius of tens of meters, her entire palm, portions of her body and her wrappers were stained by the dust of the commodity which guaranteed her and, perhaps, her entire family, livelihood.

A popular billboard Advertisement in Nigeria reads: “It’s not dirt; it’s national pride.” For Mama Laraba and her sister queens of the charcoal trade, the black dust stain is not dirt; it’s charcoal trade pride.

It was about 10 am of Tuesday, August 25, and in spite of the fact that it is the rainy season, when the commodity seems naturally more essential for various more reasons than during the dry season, buyers were not flooding the market yet from the many parts of the Tin City to buy according to need and wherewithal – from a whole sack down to the various sizes of the dish measures, some of them arranged on tables, and the rows of the various small heaps arranged on spread sacks on the bare ground.

Depending on season, frequency of supply and quality of the commodity (this is determined by the tree of which the charcoal is made – for example, the locust bean tree is said to produce some of the best quality charcoal), a sack could cost between N700 and N1000. Presently, according to Maman John, the charcoal traders buy a sack of most supplies at N900 and sell it at N1000.

To mass-produce charcoal for the trade, a tree (or group of trees) is felled and burned expertly to a state. The fire is then doused; this is done by several means, to ensure that it does not burn to a degree that could produce the charcoal too brittle to guarantee a long-lasting burn to the satisfaction of the end consumer.

Many a farmer burns the tree he fells in the process of clearing his farm to produce such quantity of charcoal for sale.

Mama Laraba and her sister ladies of the charcoal business had a more serious and frustrating reason to look distraught, of which the sparse population and slow flow of buyers to the market are symptomatic.

The population of those who have discovered the ‘milk and honey’ in the charcoal trade have increased in droves over the years, with wealthier people virtually ‘hijacking’ it at its bulk-commodity level.

These hijackers, according to Mama Laraba and co, foray into the bushes to meet the producers of the commodity directly for bulk-purchase and now transport it in trucks to various parts of the country, including Jos itself, a development which, therefore, causes the dual problems of, first, slashing, overtime, the population and frequency of the buyers to the Tafawa Balewa Street charcoal market and, second, substantially destocking the market of the commodity.

Consequent upon this ‘distressing’ monopoly-breaking development for Mama Laraba and her fellows, traders of the commodity have emerged in many wards of the Tin City, and children now hawk it house-to-house, another buyer-population-reduction factor for the Tafawa Balewa Street Kasuwar Gawayi (charcoal market).

Deforestation or whatever names the depletion of the forest of the country is called? What is that? Whatever it is, it is not the business of Mama Laraba and her fellow business women. They don’t seem to care to know the heavy connection between their trade and the rapid deforestation of the country and the subsequent grave implication of the increasing massive production of their commodity-in-trade on the country’s ecosystem.

For Mama Laraba, Kande, popularly called Maman John, and their co business women, their monopoly of the business has been broken substantially, with more people discovering the milk and honey of charcoal trade in Jos and many other parts of Northern Nigeria, a development which has led to the commodity meeting the larger population of the buyers in many parts of the country, many of whom could, otherwise, have flooded their Kasuwar Gawayi (charcoal market).

The house-to-house hawking of the commodity by many more emerging petty traders compounded the problem of these queens of the charcoal trade.

All they want is to restore their monopoly of the trade. The grave implication of mass-felling trees for mass-producing charcoal is entirely the business of whoever feels deforestation constitutes a disaster worth any concern.

Felling of trees in many parts of Nigeria for the massive production of charcoal as cheaper fuel for cooking and other domestic needs, and, subsequently, the increasing boom in the charcoal trade, constitute an emerging grave factor in the deforestation of the country.

At various times, Nigeria has had the highest deforestation rate in Africa and the world.

According to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, in 2005, Nigeria had the highest deforestation rate in the world, explaining that between 2000 and 2005, the country lost 55.7 percent of its primary forest, with the forest being cleared for logging, timber export, subsistence agriculture and notably the collection of firewood, “which remains most problematic in Western Africa.”

Rapid infrastructural development at varying degrees from the most urban to virtually the remotest areas of the country stands out today as one of the few most devastating gnawers of forest in Nigeria, as is the case everywhere globally.

FAO, in its Global Forest Resources Assessment of 2005, said between 1990 and 2000, Nigeria lost an average of 409,700 hectares of forest every year, equal to an average annual deforestation rate of 2.38 percent. In total, according to FAO, Nigeria lost 35.7 percent of its forest cover, amounting to an about 6,145,000 hectares between 1990 and 2005.

The global body alarmed on the grave implication of this ugly occurrence on the country’s ecosystem, quoting figures by the World Conservation Monitoring Centre which showed that Nigeria homes 1417 known species of fauna, and although national parks and games reserves have increased in the country, only 3.6 percent of the country is protected from the forces of deforestation.

Last January, the Minister of Environment, John Odey was reported as lamenting that Nigeria ranks highest in Africa on the problem of deforestation, saying that estimates then showed that desert encroached into the Nigerian landmass at the rate 600 meters per annum, thereby threatening the food base of the country, expressing the need for forestry officials in the country to change the attitude of Nigerians towards the forest by integrating the needs of the masses of the country into the forest development plans of government.

An Assistant Director in the Forestry Department of the Federal Ministry of Environment, John Mshelbwala, was recently reported by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) to have pointed out that Nigeria has the highest deforestation rate in Africa with its 3.5 percent rate annually, saying that the country had less than 15 percent forest cover instead of 25 percent, showing a deficit of ten percent.

Lamenting, almost gutturally, the deforestation situation of the country, Mr. Mshelbwala was quoted: “We are supposed to have 20 percent of the landmass of the country covered by forest, but we have just less than 15 percent; we are in deficit of 10 percent. How are we going to cover up the deficit, when over-population is rising and the demand for land is increasing everyday; where do we get land to allocate for afforestation to address the deficit?” as he stressed the need for government to enforce the relevant laws to control the rate of deforestation.

The Assistant Director, according to the report, urged the state governments in the federation to desist from seeing forest as a source of revenue generation by granting licenses to wood contractors to deplete the forest for timber making and other ventures, as he charged estate developers to take into account the roles trees played in sustaining the environment, and the farmers to be cautious in their agricultural practice to avoid over-depleting the forest.

Clearing the forest for infrastructural development and agricultural purposes; timber making and hewing of firewood; and desertification, complained about for ages, albeit with virtually nothing done about them, are all gnawing the Nigerian forest at an alarmingly rapid rate.

Rampant felling of trees for massive production of charcoal for commercial purposes and the consequent boom of the charcoal trade in the country is also gnawing the forest at its own alarming rate in the class of wood as source of fuel.

This is a deeper plunge into the deforestation-for-firewood seemingly intractable problem.

Charcoal producers seem in a fast pace to catch up with timber producers in the class of forest devastators for wood for various purposes by using saws to mass-fell trees.

The glaring manifestation of this development is the booming charcoal business in many places across the country, exemplified by the Tafawa Balewa Street, Jos Kasuwar Gawayi.

How goes the trade in the Tafawa Balewa Street Kasuwar Gawayi?

“The business for us here is no more booming as it did many years ago,” Kande, popularly called Maman John, seasoned by her 20-year experience in the charcoal trade, complained, explaining, “many more people have discovered the sweetness of the trade and they have hijacked it from us. They hijack most of the truck-loads of supplies as they drive into town so that only a small fraction of the supplies reaches us here. Many years ago, we monopolized the trade. Now many people in town have discovered its gains and they have ventured into it, and this has rendered our business here bleak. Most times now, we only come to the market because we are used to it, but our business is not booming.”

Maman John said supplies come to them from many places within and outside Plateau State including Jingir (within the state) and Bauchi State, listing the trees with which the bulk of the charcoal supplied to them is made as including the locust bean and mahogany trees.

“We are only retail traders. We receive truck loads of between 50 and 150 sacks and smaller haulage vehicles deliver between 50 and 60 sacks” she disclosed, explaining, “twenty years ago, when the trees were felled by hand by the people producing the charcoal, a truck could only deliver, say, 50 bags to us because the production was not massive as it is now. Now the charcoal producers fell many more trees with machine and there is mass production of charcoal. So, a truck can deliver to us between 150 and 200 sacks.”

She said depending on the tree with which the charcoal of particular supplies is made of, the queens of the trade buy each bag at N900, amounting to N135, 000 for a truck load of 150 sacks.

“If you don’t have the money at the time it is supplied to you, you receive the supplies; sell it, and then you balance the supplier after deducting your profit. But if you have the money, you pay for the whole truck on supply and sell the commodity at your pace without worrying over balancing any supplier,” Kande explained, revealing that charcoal business booms generally in many places because more people now use it as cooking fuel, especially when they cannot afford the cost of firewood sometimes “and people use it also as fuel to bake cake.”

According to Maman John, “people now need charcoal more than hitherto because of population increase and many more people have ventured into the charcoal trade. Places to which we used to supply charcoal now have many people selling it among them. This has increased the number of people using charcoal. Many years ago, we used to carry the charcoal on our heads, combing those wards, hawking it. Now those wards have many traders among them selling it. They have stopped buying from us. This is why our business is no more brisk. If you had come in those years of brisk business, you would have met me attending to so many buyers that I wouldn’t have had the time to grant you any interview. Those were the years when all buyers trooped here to us because no one else in town was selling Gawayi (charcoal).”

She said because more people now use charcoal for various purposes, giving rise to higher demand, its producers now have to use machines to mass-fell trees to mass-produce it to enable them satisfy the demand.

Kande spoke on the prohibition of the felling of trees for charcoal making, saying that their suppliers from Bauchi State have complained of efforts by government there to ban them, “but because it is the means of livelihood for many people, those people defied the government efforts, and those efforts by the Bauchi government to stop tree felling for the production of charcoal did not succeed because our supplies from that state has not in any way reduced. In fact, supplies from that state have even increased.”

Maman john complained about the effect of the use of gas on the charcoal trade: “The use of cooking gas has reduced the population of charcoal buyers. Those who converted to the use of gas to cook don’t come to us for charcoal any longer.”

Peter Wada, who has worked for five years now with the charcoal traders, stressed the fact that charcoal trade now booms more than it did many years ago because of the population increase and the increase in the population of the traders of the fuel.

He admitted: “Massive charcoal production has caused rapid deforestation, and government should do something about it. The trade should be controlled by banning house-to-house hawking of it to reduce public demand. When this demand is reduced, supplies will naturally reduce and the number of trees felled for the production of charcoal will consequently naturally reduce.”

Mama Laraba was more revealing.

“For us here, the charcoal trade boomed many years ago more than it now does. Despite the fact that people used to deride us for the black stain all over our body, and even buyers didn’t want to come near us to avoid being stained, we monopolized our trade. All buyers came to us,” she recalled, complaining: “now wealthy people have hijacked it from us. They go right into the bush to the producers, bulk-purchasing trailer-loads of the commodity and transporting it to places like Onitsha, Maiduguri, Kano and many other towns and cities in the country. We get our supplies of course, but the trade here with us is no more booming as it used to do many years ago. Many people have discovered the gains in the trade. The wealthy consumers have, for example, discovered that for however long it stays in stock, charcoal doesn’t rot. So, they bulk-purchase and stock it with much lesser risk even in terms of wastage through accidents. Even if it stays in stock for a year, it doesn’t rot. They can always use it anytime they want, unlike other fuels which are stored with the risk of wastage. This is why wealthy merchants have hijacked the trade from us.”

Mama Laraba listed some of the places where charcoal is mass-produced.

“It is produced along the road to Wamba (Nasarawa State), road to Bauchi, the road to Zaria, and in very many more places people are felling trees to make charcoal for sale. Sometimes, some of the producers don’t even bring it to the city; they sell it right there in the bush where wealthy merchants bulk-purchase it and transport it to many parts of the country. Charcoal is found for sale everywhere now. Take the Jos-Kano road; you will see charcoal everywhere for sale. There was a year I followed that road and I discovered that everywhere is charcoal. They are felling all the trees to make charcoal for sale,” she observed.

“Our main problem now, which we have not yet been able to solve, is the trend whereby many wealthy merchants will now transport charcoal into Jos and go house-to-house hawking it, instead of them to bring it to us in the market. We are tired of making unsuccessful efforts to stop this trend in the trade,” she complained, stressing, “We certainly want to stop such people from frustrating our business.”

The Kasuwar Gawayi charcoal traders pay revenue to government.

“Every year the local government officials come here to collect revenue from us. Every one of us pays that revenue. Sometimes we even have to pay for the permit to off-load our supplies. If we fail to do so, the local government officials lock the truck and we cannot off-load the supplies. Even this permit is paid once yearly, N5000 for each track-load, and receipts are issued to us. For the traditional yearly revenue, the officials sometimes collect N300, sometimes N400, sometimes N200; we just cannot understand the fixed amount. It seems it is not fixed,” Mama Laraba disclosed.

With the heightening demand for charcoal for domestic and other various uses, especially due to its affordability to the masses, according to its traders, come the need for higher production and supply and its subsequent booming trade across the country. Consequently, trees are mass-felled for mass production of the commodity.

The charcoal trade seems not an ignorable factor in the deforestation of the country.