Old fashion, rural donkeys play modern roles

Although donkeys are an everyday sight in northern Nigeria, little is known of their traditional management. As compared to other domesticated species, donkeys have received little or no attention from development agencies despite the fact that they are essential to the subsistence strategies of many communities in semi-arid regions. There are four non-species of donkeys […]

Although donkeys are an everyday sight in northern Nigeria, little is known of their traditional management. As compared to other domesticated species, donkeys have received little or no attention from development agencies despite the fact that they are essential to the subsistence strategies of many communities in semi-arid regions.

There are four non-species of donkeys in the Northern region of Nigeria, the Jaba,Aura,Akaza and Iddabari.  Donkeys can provide power for a wide variety of rural and urban tasks and appear to stay healthy on varied and often poor-quality diets, and with only modest management inputs. Fielding (1987) has reviewed the distribution and place of donkeys in rural Africa.

However, in other countries such as Ethiopia and China, donkeys are used in farming, as simple and light farming implements are used.

The primary function of the donkey in Nigeria has traditionally, been as a beast of burden, but it is in this role that their use went into a temporary decline during the oil boom of the 1970s. For a long period, an artificial exchange rate for the naira meant that vehicles, fuel, and spares parts became cheap.

But with the prevailing poverty situation bedeviling most of the northern rural areas and with the problem of bad access roads, rural dwellers were left with no other option than to continue embracing the use of donkeys.

An inhabitant of Tanagar Village in Warawa Local Government Area in Kano, said, “Without good access roads the people will remain locked up in their villages, we cannot take our farm produce to the markets and at times. We cannot even take our wards and, wives to hospitals when the need arises. But if you have a donkey within your reach, all will be solved. You can go to where you want to go with or without a good access road. We have grown accustomed to it since the Government has no intention of providing one for the community.

This encouraged the development, both of a road infrastructure for trucks and pick-ups and the widespread use of low-capacity motorcycles in rural areas. From the late 1970s, this combination of motorcycles and cheaper, more regular, rural transportation provided effective competition for donkeys.

Indeed, although the Jakin Kano, the Kano donkey, is proverbial, by the mid-1980s, it had all but disappeared. Donkeys were seen as a symbol of the old-fashioned and ‘backward’ rural ways and were thought to be permanently disappearing. As a result, initiatives to study donkeys or assist smallholders with their purchase, or to develop equipment for them, were poorly received.

However, economic circumstances changed rapidly. In 1986, under the structural adjustment programme, the naira currency was effectively devalued, making everything with an imported component more expensive. That was when Nigerians started having a re-think on the over indulgence in modern patterns.

The massive road and vehicle infrastructure established in the 1980s was able to carry this recession for a while, but transporters found it increasingly difficult to maintain vehicles. Moreover, where vehicles were valuable, it was more strategic to use them on tarred roads where recurrent maintenance costs were lower. Rural markets have, thus ,been increasingly left to their own devices.

One consequence of these developments has been that donkeys are beginning to become popular, once again. Their low cost, capacity to work, sturdiness and resistance to diseases makes them attractive to rural households in the semi-arid zones. However, rebuilding donkey capacity takes time. Equipment, management skills and core breeding herds within the country have been lost and buying new stocks from Niger involves payment in CFA Francs.

Nonetheless, those farmers have been motivated to do this since 1986 speak strongly of the benefits derived from donkey ownership. In view of this, a more detailed study of donkeys seem appropriate and they were included in the National Livestock Resource Survey in 1989–1991.

Donkeys are much more scattered than ruminants and are usually not kept in herds. Many owners buy their animals from traders from Niger Republic. As a result, donkeys are difficult to study because it is rare to encounter owners who have a comprehensive knowledge of the breeding history of individual animals.

However, donkeys are not conventional sources of meat in many regions and their uses for hauling and traction do not fit within the stereotyped perspectives of livestock development agencies.

Nonetheless, they are essential to the subsistence strategies of many communities in semi-arid regions, relieving families of repetitive and energy-consuming tasks. The early history of the donkey in Africa is difficult to reconstruct because of the sparse archaeological data. The wild relatives of the donkey have been hunted to virtual extinction making it difficult to collect the genetic data necessary to establish its ancestry in details (and incidentally, have depleted the potential gene pool that might be used to revitalize domestic donkey breeds).

Although the use of the domestic donkey is well documented in Egyptian wall-paintings and other iconography, elsewhere in the continent it is remarkable, chiefly for its absence, even where there are established rock-art traditions.

Donkeys were found to be involved in a wide range of transport activities but were not used widely for plowing due to the lack of suitable equipment.

Although discouraged in many areas, donkey meat continues to be traded and consumed, especially in the south. Various reproductive parameters are described including age at first foaling and seasonality of foaling. The herd structure is described and compared with structures from other systems where donkeys are found.

A mortality rate of 7 percent was identified in the population studied. Nine commonly encountered diseases of donkeys in northern Nigeria are described. They could not all be matched to internationally recognized diseases. It is concluded that the oil boom severely damaged the base breeding population of donkeys in Nigeria which is only now recovering due to increased demand for power and continuing demand for meat. It is anticipated that the use of donkeys could grow further if suitable equipment, such as lightweight plows, are designed and made available to farmers.

A businessman who deals in donkeys at the famous Donkey market of Laraba Abasawa in Gezawa Local Government, Kano State, Malam Ahmad Umar Laraba Abasawa, said every subsistence farmer in the North keeps a donkey as a haulage animal, adding that if authorities concerned will design a simple light implement that can be drawn easily by the donkeys, such gesture will indeed boost food production in the region as not every farmer can buy a tractor or an ox.

It has been proven that donkeys have more resistance to diseases, more economical to maintain and cheaper to obtain. If you believe the era of donkey usage has gone, you may be far from the truth.