Lake Chad: Shrinking Water, Increasing Poverty, Diminishing Hopes

Alhaji Garba Bundaram, a man who has been in the business of fishing for 38 years in Lake Chad, makes this lamentation concerning the poverty he claimed his people have been thrown into as a result of the shrinking Lake Chad: “Poor fish catch renders most of to wallon in abject poverty, and not only […]

Alhaji Garba Bundaram, a man who has been in the business of fishing for 38 years in Lake Chad, makes this lamentation concerning the poverty he claimed his people have been thrown into as a result of the shrinking Lake Chad: “Poor fish catch renders most of to wallon in abject poverty, and not only that, some of us are deserting the area.”
 
HAVE THE GOOD OLD DAYS GONE FOREVER?
The shrinking of Lake Chad poses great danger to over 30 million users’ livelihood. The victims will largely be fishers and farmers. The poverty level in this part of the world has been on the increase as fishermen record less and less of fortune from the great lake. In the 1960s when the lake was in its full capacity, to be a fisherman was a big deal. Today, the varieties and volumes of fishes caught in fish nets have been reduced significantly.  The sizes of fish caught in the days of yore were far bigger in size than those being caught since the water became a ‘victim’ of climate change.
“In the past, fishes were big enough to sink boats, but now they are so tiny that they don’t even threaten nets with which they are caught. In the past, we could make a catch that only one person cannot lift. We had to invite other fishermen to help. But it seems those days are no longer with us,” Guru Garba Bundaram complained.
The much-talked about ‘climate change’ and human activities have reduced the lake to its present condition. It has receded to less than 10 percent of its size. Latest statistics from experts say the lake has shrunk from 25,000 square kilometers to less than 2,000 square kilometers.
Dr Goni Ibrahim in the Department of Geology of the University of Maiduguri said the lake has reduced to less than 10 percent of its size in the 1960s.
“It keeps drying up due to climatic conditions and human activities at the upper streams towards downstreams,” Dr Goni remarked.

LAKE CHAD AND CLIMATE CHANGE
Climate change has been attacking the lake on two fronts:  reducing the rainfall that feeds it and accelerating evaporation due to high temperatures. These put the lake into jeopardy. If it dries up, it will lead to an unmanageable disaster to the population that depends on Lake Chad.
Undoubtedly, the four nations sharing the lake, namely Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad will be worse affected. Also four other countries of Libya, Central African Republic, Sudan and Algeria that share the lake’s hydrological basin would be affected by its misfortune.

SEVERAL REASONS FOR THE RECESSION
Experts have been studying the lake to ascertain why it continues to dry up. The majority of the experts believe that the shrinking of the lake would not be unconnected with global warming which has diverse of effects on nature. In some parts of the world, ice-burg keeps on melting, causing floods that have destroyed lives and property. In some areas, lakes and rivers keep on drying up due to high temperature evaporation and human activities, like the construction of dams at the upstream.
“Why Lake Chad keeps on drying up are a couple of multiple factors. One factor is, we have seen reduction of rainfall. In the past, we used to get 800 millimetres of rain, but due to drought, it has dropped to 400 millimetres,” Dr Goni Ibrahim, who has conducted researches on the lake, told Sunday Trust.
He continued, “Smaller rivers along the tributaries do feed the lake to the downstream but the rain’s reduction seriously affects the flow of water to the lake. Another issue is human activities, the upstream construction of dams for irrigation purposes. There are Tiga and Challawa dams in Kano. They minimize the water that passes into the mightiest Lake of West African countries.”
Jimmy Adegoke, Professor of Geological Sciences with his team from the University of Missouri, United States, was at the Lake Chad five months ago to find out more about underground water and the surface water of the shallow lake. He said there are several reasons for the recession of the lake. First, is the rapid decline of precipitation in the Sahelian region. The second has to do with hydrology.  “We think that there is some connection between the surface water and the underground water, that is to say, the underground water is also decreasing to a minimum as the surface water decreases. He is also of the view that climate change is another key player in what shrank the lake to its present position.
The director of the Directorate for Technical Cooperation in Africa, Dr Yakubu Bassey, told Sunday Trust that “this basin covers about seven countries but the portion of the basin in Nigeria serves about 20 million out of the 30 million people.” He added that “Lots of scientific findings have shown that the Lake Chad keeps drying up due to several factors which are a global phenomenon,” the secretary of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC), Dr Abdullahi Umaru Ganduje  told reporters in Kano.
He continued, “Like you know, it is not only at Lake Chad; it is the world over that there is shortfall of rain. If you look to sometime 30 years ago, it was because of a decrease in rainfall that there was drought in some places. Therefore, the desert keeps encroaching on areas that used to be like forests. There are other issues, like dams construction along the basin, human activities which are causing the river to divert from its natural course, among others. You can mention a lot of scientific findings on why the lake keeps drying up.

SEVERAL DIRE CONSEQUENCES
The effects of what is happening in Lake Chad is said to be multi-dimensional, touching various sphere of lives, ranging from how over 30 million people depending on it for survival are at risk, the deserting the basin for greener pastures by some residents, conflicts among fishermen managing the scarce fishes, as well as conflicts between herdsmen and farmers along the basin.
Fishermen who used to catch fish in abundance in the 1960s had a different story to tell today. Hitherto, most of them have to keep advancing closer to the lake as it keeps shrinking. It is not different for farmers who partake in irrigation farming. They keep moving closer to the lake to make their lives better or change to other business lines. There is a growing concern among fishermen who still depend on the lake; they are, in economic terms, managing scarce resources.
“Sincerely speaking, we are facing a very difficult condition. Our income has gone down. Poverty is seen in our homes. This was not our lot in the 1960s. At the time, the lake was full to its capacity, we were making a lot of money; I can’t give figures now,” septuagenarian fisherman Garba Bundaram lamented.
He continued “the shrinking of the lake has not only affected our teeming population that depends on the water, it has also led to poverty and chaos among us, because we have to scramble for the scarce fishes in Lake Chad. I could remember, in those happy days I wouldn’t see my competitor near where I used to cast my fish net because the lake was huge, but now we are competing in a shallow lake.”
Umar Ali, another fisherman, told Sunday Trust that it was not clear to him the distinction between Nigeria and Chad’s border on the lake. There have been disputes between fishermen from the two countries since the lake began to lose its water to climate change.
“One of the problems we now face is that there is no specific boundary between Nigeria and Chad,” he said, adding that “we want to know the limit of Nigeria’s boundary, and where that of Chad begin and ends. Chadians claim that the areas we believe belongs to Nigeria are theirs. Their security operatives assault us very often, beating us and chasing us from our occupation. Sometimes, they force us to pay taxes to them. We want a clear demarcation between our territories in the Lake Chad.”

SAND DUNES AND OTHER TALES
The space that the receding lake has left behind has become sand dunes. Some fishermen who are finding it difficult to survive on fishing are switching to farming. But, this, too, is proving difficult for them because they need the scarce water to engage in farming.
An old farmer, Audu Ibrahim, lamented about the prevailing situation thus: “Now the lake has receded again. Where we were farming is turning into a desert gradually. Where only one farmer used to cultivate in the past is now being shared by as many as 10 farmers. So we are facing what we may term as the scarcity of fertile land. Some of us have left the area around the lake and we are planning to move south-ward where we can find greener pastures for farming.”
The hitherto booming boats construction business at the bank of Lake Chad is on the verge of extinction as a result of the misfortunes of those who depend on the water from the lake for survival. Passengers who travelled in the area around the lake have begun to change their routes. Therefore, very few of them depend on engine boats to make their trips.
Bana Masa, a driver that navigates around the lake, is uncomfortable with the situation.
“We no longer have a reliable working condition here,” he told Sunday Trust. “We don’t know if a day will come when the lake would just dry up completely. We need government’s intervention so that we don’t die of hunger.”
The crisis in Lake Chad is affecting fish marketers and consumers. When Sunday Trust visited the Baga market in Maiduguri from where fishes captured from the lake are moved to other parts of the country, traders lamented what has become their fate in recent times. A market that used to be crowded some 15 years back is now very scanty, with very few traders and relatively insignificant trading activities going on.
In an interview, fish merchant Mohammed Sani Garba, speaking on the trend in the business, said, the quantity of fishes they obtained from Lake Chad had continued to reduce almost on a daily basis. “In the past, we used to receive about 30 trucks of fish from Lake Chad every day, but this has reduced to about seven trucks or less.”
The predicament of the vast population who live along this river basin has been noticed by experts, technocrats and concerned citizens.
“If the lake dries up, over 30 million people would have no means of livelihood. This is a big security problem, especially because of the growing competition for the shrinking quantities of water in Lake Chad,” Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje said. He added that “poverty and hunger will increase. When there is no food to eat there is bound to be violence.”
Dr Bassey of the Directorate for Technical Cooperation in Africa, highlighted other effects of the lake’s recession and possible remedies, thus: “Definitely, life has been very terrible and, in some cases, tragic for this particular people. But there are several scientific interventions that could be made to alleviate their suffering. Take, for example, the water transfer project. The de-silting of some of the river channels that take water to the downstream, controlled release of water from some of the dams so that people from the downstream can get water and use for irrigation, fishing and for their livestock are some strategies.  These measures will definitely make an impact on the lives of those people.”
Dr Goni Ibrahim further said that, “Some farmers have abandoned farming activities in the region. Fishermen are leaving the vocation they had practised for a very long time. Some have even left Nigeria, unknowingly, as they keep on following the lake. There  are also conflicts between the farmers and herdsmen. Sometimes, Chadians and Nigerians do have some disagreement over where the boundary between the two countries on the lake is. All is due to the shrinking of the lake.”

THE ROAD THAT SHOULD BE TAKEN
Although, the governments of the countries that benefit from Lake Chad claim to be making efforts to resuscitate it, the matter is not being tackled with the kind of seriousness it deserves. Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger Republic have mobilized $5 million for feasibility studies to be carried out on how to recapture River Oubangui from Congo to replenish the lake. The plan by the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC), if executed, would help in replenishing the river.
Alhaji Ali Ndume, a member of the House of Representative hails from Borno State and has been concerned about the situation in Lake Chad. He told this reporter in an interview that the feasibility studies had begun in earnest. 
The lawmaker said, “What is worrying us now is about the completion of the project. It is a capital intensive project. We require a lot of money to have it completed. I don’t think Nigeria alone can finance the project. That’s why we are calling the attention of the international community to it.” 
The hope of millions of users of the water from the lake has continued to shrink. If the countries that utilise the lake would summon the political will to tackle the problem, the decline can be reversed. This outcome will, no doubt, boost the activities of farmer, fishermen, traders and the entire population that depend on Lake Chad. It could, apart from reducing poverty and conflicts in the region, boost economic activities to the advantage of all the member-countries of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC).