Desertification: Water scarcity hits Sokoto farmers

Galadima Alkassan Muwadata, the village head, draped in his farmer’s garb said a larger portion of the plains are unfarmed because of the scarcity of water. He said even those that farm most times incur losses because the plants droop and die or even when they survive, they yield just little. “We are farmers and […]

Galadima Alkassan Muwadata, the village head, draped in his farmer’s garb said a larger portion of the plains are unfarmed because of the scarcity of water. He said even those that farm most times incur losses because the plants droop and die or even when they survive, they yield just little.
“We are farmers and we love farming. It is our pride but we suffer to get water. The wells we dig with our hands don’t supply us enough water, so at the end of the day, we don’t produce as much as we would have liked to produce,” the aged farmer said.
Apart from maize and tomato, the people cultivate carrot, onions and tobacco, and the village chief added that they would have been farming other crops like rice if there was enough water supply.
He said the situation is getting worse and worse every year with no solution in sight. “In the previous years we didn’t have to dig wells as deep as we dig now. As the Sahara desert is encroaching, the ground water is ebbing,” he added.
Muwadata said the scarcity has forced some farmers in his domain, who are much younger and stronger to flee to nearby Niger, where he said the government there provides water for the farmers and they pay a token after harvest.
“We need a dam around here to supply us with water even if we we have to pay at the end of the farming season like they do in Niger. Some of our people here have relocated to Niger, where the government supplies water for the farmers and they pay after harvesting their crops. We spend a lot of money to get water and at the end of the day we only incur losses.The Nigerian government is not helping. They keep saying that they will construct a dam around Ilela but nothing has happened yet,” he said.
However, other farms on the valley looked lush green, with the black soil moist and soft. Snorting and spurting smoke, water machines pump water through hoses from the deep wells to wet the crops.
Alhaji Sani Abubakar was seen repairing his water pump machine at Ilela town said the machines break down frequently because of the stress of drawing water from the deep wells, which are over 1 000 metres deep.
“Our problem here is water. We need boreholes instead of these hand-dug wells for our irrigation farming because our river has dried up. Unless we dig wells of about 2000 metres, we don’t get water and a lot of our people are suffering because of this problem,” he said.
Sani added that they also expend a lot on fuel to power their water pump machines as they buy fuel at the black market at the rate of N140 per litre.
He called on the government to come to their aid and sink boreholes near their farms so that water will not be a problem for them again.
He also said the wind sometimes destroys their crops but said they do not have the wherewithal to get tree seedlings, plant and water them to maturity to serve as wind breakers.
“We can only plant one or two trees around our compounds because we do not have the money to get plenty seedlings, plant and water them around the farms. That is what government says it has been doing but we are yet to feel the impact,” he said.
For Bello Shuaibu, who abandoned farming for commercial motorcycling, life is much easier now that he no longer goes to the farm. He said the stress of getting water was just too much for him so he had to abandon farming.
“Most of us young men find farming here difficult and we are abandoning it for other jobs. Getting water to wet the crops is always a problem so I had to look for another means of livelihood,” he said, adding that some of his friends who could not get jobs in Ilela have gone to Niger to farm.
Desertification is a growing menace in most states of the north, which lie south of the Sahara desert, considered as the hottest and longest desert in the world. Desertification is ocassioned by land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas, resulting from various factors including climatic variations and human activities.
It has been estimated that one-third of the earth’s land areas and as many as 850 million of the world’s poorest people are potentially at risk. It is a global phenomenon, affecting both developed and developing nations. About 350 million hectares of land is affected by desertification world wide.
Experts have said the main causes of desertification arepoor land management and environmental pressure. Dry land soils, because of their inherently low fertility, are particularly susceptible to erosion, especially when the  vegetation covering them has been removed or degraded.
Nigeria is said to be currently losing about 350,000 square metres of its land mass to the enchroaching Sahara desert, which is advancing southwardly at an estimated rate of 0.6 kilometres a year. With increased population and livestock pressure on lands, desertification tends to be accelerating. In some areas, Pastoralists moving to less arid areas disrupt the local ecosystem and increase the rate of erosion of the land. Incidentally, pastoralists try to get away from the desert, but with their land use practices, obliviously set off another process of desertification in their new communities. They would move on soon after, taking with them their land use practices and leaving a trail of desert behind, and the chain goes on.
Environmentalists believe trees have stabilizing effect on the environment, stressing that when upland watersheds are left bare, heavy rains wash the soil with any crop planted on it into the valleys below. In the dry areas, trees are said to provide fertility to the soil and protect it from water and wind erosions.  With wood a main source of fuel in rural areas, when the populace exhausts the supply of firewood, the use of crop residues then comes handy. These residues, scientists say are relevant in  protecting the soil because they reduce water runoff thereby encouraging percolation. Where the water runs off quickly, soil erosion is accelerated and water levels drop underground causing wells to dry.
Desertification and land degradation have been identified as the major causes of poverty, hunger, social ills, and loss of bio-diversity as well as natural resources in the affected regions in Nigeria. And as recent reports on poverty in Nigeria have shown that there is more poverty in the North, desert encroachment may just be one of the causes.
Desertification also leads to conflicts amongst communities competing for farmlands. These conflicts can sometimes lead to clashes and eventual loss of lives and properties. The problem also leads to migration from the rural areas to the urban centres.
Findings have shown that within the period of 15 years, 1960 to 1975, African countries in desert-prone areas had suffered damages from desert encroachment and drought worth US $15 billion. The ground water level put at 10 metres in the 1960’s, has dropped to 150 metres as at 2004. Consequently, it has become impossible for some areas to get water from their wells.
As for Nigeria, research findings have indicated that the desert occupies between 35% and 40% of the land mass of the frontline States of Borno, Yobe, Jigawa, Kano, Katsina, Zamfara, Sokoto and Kebbi. The African Institute for Applied Economics, AIAE, had estimated that in 2005 Nigeria had lost about N180 billion annually to deforestation. The AIAE hinged the destructive trend to crop land expansion and the felling of trees for fuel. Real wood fuel prices had doubled in the last two decades in the country due to woodland destruction resulting in an estimated loss of between N45 to N60 billion annually.
Sokoto state being one of  the frontline states, it will be interesting to look at its physical and environment setting and how that affects the rural people who face the brunt of desertification. Findings have revealed that  Sokoto state is drained by the Rima River and its tributaries, most of which spring in the southeastern part of the state. While the Bunsuru and Gangere Rivers flow in a northerly direction, joining the Rima near Sabon Birni, the Sokoto, Zamfara and Ka tributaries, on the other hand, flow westwards to join the Rima. In their upper courses, all the tributaries flow over basement complex rocks. Their valleys are rather narrow and restricted until the rivers enter the area of young sedimentary rocks, where they flow through broad valleys.
The climate of Sokoto State is tropical continental and is dominated by two opposing air masses tropical maritime and tropical continental. The tropical maritime is moist and blows from the Atlantic, while the tropical continental air mass, which is dry, blows from the Sahara desert.
The tropical air mass blows during the rainy season while the tropical continental air mass prevails during the dry season. Much of the rain in Sokoto state falls between June and September in the north  and from April to October in other parts. The annual rainfall is between 500mm in the north and 1300mm to the south.
Moreover, the people of the state experience two extreme temperatures relative to the hot and cold seasons. The highest temperature during the hot season is experienced in the months of March to April. Between November and February, there is the prevalence of harmattan, characterized by very cold temperatures and dusty winds and often accompanied by thick fog of troubling intensity.
The whole state falls within the Sudan Savannah. The vegetation is characterized by thorny species with a scatter of  tufts of bushes. The river courses are lined with dum palms, which are melded with a herbaceous cover of annual grasses.
Sandy topsoil with clayey subsoil  are common, except along the flood plains of the river valleys where alluvial soils exist. To the north of the state, especially along the border with Niger Republic, the undulating plains are covered by aeolian deposits of variable depth. These support light sandy soils. And due to its geographical location, the state suffers from the menace of desertification and occasional drought.
Speaking on the menace desertification poses to Sokoto state and what the government is doing to fight the environmental challenge, commissioner for Environment in the state, Dr Jabbi Kilgori said the government has provided shelterbelts in many places including Ilela, Gwadabawa , Sokoto metropolis, among others.
“In most of the big towns you find trees, like in Sokoto metropolis there are plantations that have been planted for about 30, 40 and 50 years ago. In rural areas the main challenge is that there is a lot of scouting for energy; people are looking for firewood in the forest reserves but government is a lot to ensure that we get more seedlings and we plant them. We raise about one million seedlings of different species that are made available to the people free. The state government has directed the local governments to plant at least two kilometres of shelterbelts every year,” he said.
He added that the government is working in conjunction with other NGOs to plant more trees and combat desertification, saying SURE-P programme has embarked on tree planting, which will cover five kilometres in every local government of the state, with Kware and Ilela being some of the first beneficiaries.
“We are also encouring people to establish woodlots, where they get firewood because there is acute shortage of firewood in the rural areas. If we encourage people to cultivate woodlots, they can be able to harvest them for their energy requirement,” he said.
Kilgori said the government is also constructing earth dams in some of the frontline local governments beginning from Isa, Sabon Birnin, Gada, Ilela, Tangaza to Gudu to impound water so that it can be used  to raise nurseries for seedlings and also to provide water for irrigation farming.
Under the great green wall, a global tree planting project to halt desert encroachment, the commissioner said the state has planted about 170 kilometres of shelterbelts across the six frontline local governments, adding that two localities each are selected for the tree planting and are provided with boreholes for watering of the trees.