Desertification: Kebbi farmers decry poor yields

Sunday Trust spoke to farmers in Chibiki Baba and Wawangu villages in Kangiwa local government of the state and they revealed that desertification is affecting their crops yield and making survival difficult. The sleepy and deprived village of Chibiki Baba looked gloomy as the January wind howled and rustled withered stalks of guinea corn and […]

Sunday Trust spoke to farmers in Chibiki Baba and Wawangu villages in Kangiwa local government of the state and they revealed that desertification is affecting their crops yield and making survival difficult.
The sleepy and deprived village of Chibiki Baba looked gloomy as the January wind howled and rustled withered stalks of guinea corn and millet well stacked under denuded trees and on low-roofed mud houses. Harvest season is over but there is little to show for the back-breaking toil all year long. Yields for cereal crops grown in the area are becoming poorer and poorer and the locals said they are being threatened by hunger and starvation if measures are not taken to control the challenges thrown up by desertification.
Isa Sabo, who said the desert is encroaching at a very fast pace and is making life hard for rural dwellers who eke their living from farming, decried that sand usually cover their crops resulting in outright death of the plants or stunted growth and then poor yields.
“As you can see there is no river around our community here and we only farm during the rainy season. Rain starts here by May and ends in September. We start planting in June but we hardly get good harvest at the end of the farming season because when it rains, the wind, which is usually very strong here, carries the water away and does not allow the water to settle and soak the soil enough to nourish the plants.
“Also, the wind and the rain combine to destroy our crops. The two natural elements move sand and cover the stems of our crops or in some places, they (rain and wind) erode the upper crust of the soil, which is soft and fertile and can provide nourishment to the crops. When that happens, the roots of the plants are exposed to the burning sun and that results in outright death or retarded growth of the plants. And for you not to have this experience, you have to constantly gather soil and manure at the base of the plants,” Sabo said.
He said the land is exposed with little vegetative cover to retain the rain water and trees to trap or break the speed of the wind, thereby making life difficult for farmers in his area.
He urged the federal government to extend the Great Green Wall project, which the president launched late last year in nearby Bachaka to his community. He appealed to both the state and federal governments to come to their aid otherwise they will experience hunger.
“We are on the brink of hunger because the harvest season just finished a few months ago but we have little grains left in our granaries. Before the rain starts and we resume farming, life would have really been difficult for our children because we adults can endure but children don’t,” he added.
“The desert is making the people poorer and poorer because they rely on farming for food and to meet their other basic needs and they harvest their crops and take to the markets and sell. There is no other means of empowerment here except farming and when you don’t have fertile land to farm on, automatically you have lost your livelihood,” Bashir Abubakar, a native of Chibiki Baba, who resides in Abuja, said.
According to him, apart from desert encroachment affecting farming productivity, it makes it difficult for the locals to get drinkable water. “There is a single well in the whole community and I don’t think that is good for the health of our people. If there is a water-borne disease outbreak it is going to affect everybody in the community,” he added.
Abubakar, who said even the well water is sold for N5 per 20 litres jerry can by the man that maintains the motorized well, urged the government to take development to rural dwellers in order to give them hope for survival in these difficult circumstances.
“The government is supposed to plant a lot of trees. The few neem trees you see here were planted long ago by our people but since then they have not continued because they are poor and cannot afford the expenses of procuring seedlings, planting and watering them. The launching of the Great Green Wall is a welcome development but the tree planting exercise should be extended to as many communities in the desert areas as possible,” he said.  
Rabi Suleiman, a house wife who spends between N100 and N150 daily buying water for her household chores urged the government to at least provide water for the people. She said it is almost like committing economic suicide having to spend that much on water alone in an impoverished community like hers.
Mudi Yusuf who sells the water said he makes about N500 to N600 every day and that complements his earnings from farming and animal rearing. But he said there are other members of the community who do not have money to buy the water and when they come and beg he allows them to fetch for free.
Bales of hay were piled on the roofs of the scruffy mud houses, clustered in the village, with narrow pathways just wide enough for a bull-drawn chariot to pass through.
Mudi, who is also a herder, said the fodder is harvested around September and October stored for feeding animals in the dry season when there are no grasses for grazing.
Meanwhile, the Mai Angwan Chibiki, 79-year-old Yusuf Yabo said they started feeling the impact of desertification in their community around 1984. He said before then, the soil was not as degraded as it is now so you did not need to gather soil and manure to cover the exposed roots of crops.
He added: “We did not know the impact of the Sahara on our environment and in our daily lives before 1984. The soil was not as degraded as it is now and crops yields were not as poor as we have them now. Even the wind was not as harsh as it is now. Rainfall too is becoming shorter than before. I remember about 30 or 40 years ago, sometimes rain started falling here at the end of April but these days that is a rare occurrence.”
The Mai Angwan Chibiki lamented that there has been no conscious effort at massive tree planting and that has largely contributed to the degradation of the environment. He said he has planted over 10 trees in his life time but now he no longer has the physical strength and the financial means to plant and nurture trees.
He also said his people are experiencing hunger because they live in an area where they cannot do irrigation farming, adding that the harvests from the rainy season farming alone cannot sustain most families for a whole year.
“Sometimes, when you think about the whole problem, you just give thanks to God, because it is really tough surviving in our circumstances. If we had a water dam around here life would have been much better for us. Our young men could engage in dry season farming and get food for us to eat. But because there is no water, most of them run to towns to look for other means of survival. Others return at the beginning of the farming season but others don’t.
“We are therefore, appealing to government to help us plant trees and provide water for us so that our environment and our lives can improve,” Yabo said.
A camel brayed in the wild where it is on its own grazing in the scarce green shrubs while a donkey whinnied under the heavy yoke of gallons of water by a nearby well. Life is tough here and only tough animals like these can survive the harsh environment.
In the nearby village of Wawangu, the story is just the same. Hijab covering, shy looking women scramble for water at a very deep, old well with its mouth wide open, while kids with grubby faces scampered around. Wawangu is relatively bigger than Chibiki but when it’s over 50 years old well dries up, it depends on the neighbouring village (Chibiki) to get water.  
Wakili Maigari Wawangu, Hassan Ishiaka, said there are four wells in the village but during dry season they still face acute water scarcity as all the wells dry up before the beginning of  the rainy season.
“As I am speaking to you now, the other three wells have dried up and this is the only one remaining. Even this one, before the end of February it will dry up and we will have to go to Chibiki to buy water,” he said.
He said besides the problem of water, the villagers are also grappling with other challenges thrown up by desertification just like Chibiki and many other communities in the state.
“The wind and rain have destroyed our soil and when we farm we don’t get as much harvest as we should get. This is a very big problem for us because that is the only occupation for most of our people and it is the main source of livelihood around here,” he lamented.
The physical setting and climatic condition of Kebbi State has largely determined the extent to which communities are affected by desertification, as scientific research over the years has shown. In the northern part of Kebbi, where the threat of desertification is real, there are two groups of soils:  the upland and fadama soils. These two soil groups are found around the Sokoto Rima Basin. While the upland soils are sandy and well drained, the fadama soils are generally clayey and hydro morphic, especially in the back swamps.
The natural vegetation of the state consists of a northern guinea savannah in the south and southeast, with medium sized locust bean trees and shea butter trees forming a major feature. The Sudan savannah predominates the northern part with an open woodland of  scattered dum palms and other tree species peculiar to the environment
The natural vegetation has however been altered in many areas by repeated cultivation, overgrazing, tree felling and bush burning, thereby hastening desertification.  
Kebbi State is drained by River Rima system with major tributaries like Gawon and Gubin Ka. These tributaries rise in the basement complex region of Sokoto State and flow westward to join the Rima. However, in the southern part of the state, there are other less important rivers such as Danzaki, Soda and Kasanu, all of which flow to join the River Niger to the south of the state.
Also, Kebbi State experiences a tropical continental type of climate, which is basically controlled by two air masses, namely tropical maritime and tropical continental, blowing from the Atlantic and the Sahara Desert respectively, and these air masses determine the two dominant seasons—wet and dry.
The rainy season lasts from April to October in the southern part of the state, while it lasts from May to September in the north. The dry season lasts for the remaining period of the year. Mean annual rainfall is about 800mm in the north and 1000mm in the south.
Governments at both the state and federal levels have made half- hearted attempts at providing shelter belts but it appears it is simply overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem. The latest of such efforts was the launching of the Great Green Wall, a multi-billion dollar project aimed at reclaiming land degraded by the desert, in Bachaka, Arewa local government of the state. It remains to be seen if the project will see the light of the day and will have a far reaching impact on the lives of the locals in all the frontline local governments of Gwandu, Argungu, Birnin Kebbi, Jega, Maiyama, Arewa, Kangiwa and Dandi local government areas.
With Nigeria said to be losing about 350,000 square metres of its land mass to the encroaching Sahara desert, which is advancing southwardly at an estimated rate of 0.6 kilometres a year, the threat of hunger and starvation in the affected areas is starring the locals in the face.
However, Hon Ishaku Daudu, Commissioner for Environment  inKebbi State, who spoke with our reporter on phone, said the afforestation project under the Great Green Wall in the state is being concentrated at the border with Niger.
He said already the state has commenced the planting of about 40 kilometres of shelterbelts from Guru Angu to Bachaka as a means of controlling desertification, assuring that the tree planting will continue later in the year and possibly link up with Sokoto State.