‘Reasons government desertification programmes fail’

What motivated you to set up Africa Desertification Control Initiative (ADCI) Nigeria?
I was motivated to establish the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) called Africa Desertification Control Initiative (ADCI) Nigeria when I realised that desertification is the most fundamental environmental problem facing Nigeria, particularly North East and North West regions of the country. I approached some professional colleagues with the idea and we all agreed to carry on with it.
ADCI was established in 2008 to create awareness on the threats posed by the desertification to the rural Africans living in the desertified areas. And to also build the capacity of the vulnerable rural African people in the dry land environment to adapting to desertification situation and other climate change issues in addition to provision of professional consulting service and delivery of experts advice in areas of desertification control. Within these six years, ADCI has achieved a lot in terms of its set objectives despite funding challenges.  

How great is the threat of desertification in Nigeria?
Desertification is the major environmental problem in Nigeria. Among others, it affects more people directly and indirectly via its devastating effects on the productive land which in turn causes a lot of socio-economic problems. When the farm or grazing land has been encroached by desert, that land becomes unproductive and the people living in such an area will certainly migrate to other areas, mostly cities looking jobs. That is why unemployment rate is always increasing due to loss of land among other reasons.

What percentage of the country is lost to desertification yearly?
The actual percentage of land degraded by desertification in Nigeria is not ascertained. Figures are being quoted as an estimate. It is estimated that 43% of the total land area of Nigeria suffers from this environmental menace and it’s even difficult to estimate the annual loss of land due to desertification in Nigeria, because there is no mechanism in place to ascertain that. Sometimes you will read in the papers that desert advances at the rate of 1.6km per year. It is wrong to quantify the rate of desertification in terms of linear length. It happens in spots, and widens to form a large area. Therefore, it should be quantified in terms of an area e.g. square kilometer. It is therefore absolutely necessary for all concerned to have this important information for effective fight against the encroaching desert and other socio-economic planning.

How many people are impacted negatively by desertification in the country?
It is not only the people living in the desertified areas that are affected by the menace. People living in the urban areas are also affected. The increasing number of people migrating from the affected areas to the cities causes a lot of inconveniences to the inhabitants of the urban areas. They contribute to already swelling unemployment rate in the urban areas and add to the deterioration of the fragile infrastructural facilities.

Which region of the country suffers the most from desertification?
The 11 states (Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Bauch, Gombe, Jigawa, Kano, Katsina, Zamfara, Sokoto and Kebbi states) that cut across the North East and North West of Nigeria also known as frontline states, suffer most from desertification.

Why have we not been able to tame desert encroachment as a country?
The problem of desertification is global, as it affects all regions of the world and does not recognise international boundaries. Therefore, it does not require visa to cross from one country to another. Desertification can only be controlled, but can never be stopped, as it is as a result of twin combination of natural and anthropogenic factors.
Natural factors such as poor physical condition of the soil and extreme climatic variability cause desertification in dry lands. Soils in the desert area (an area which has lost or is losing its biological potentials) are mostly sandy in nature and therefore do not have the capacity to retain moisture and have poor organic matter content to support plant growth. It is also a fact that, most areas in the North East and North West Nigeria record a very low amount of annual rainfall, in some areas it is below 300mm per annum in addition to poor distribution of rainfall.

Whereas anthropogenic factors like deforestation, over exploitation of land, bush burning, over grazing, poor irrigation practices also cause and accelerate the desertification process.
But it is worthy to note that, it is always easier to prevent than to reclaim a degraded land. Therefore, more efforts should be geared towards the prevention of the land that has not been degraded. In Nigeria we pay more emphasis on tree planting as method of controlling desertification. While we acknowledge the tremendous preventive capacity of trees towards the encroaching desert, the issue of effective desertification combating has gone far beyond planting of trees alone. Modern and integrated combating techniques should be put in place if we want to succeed. Wealth creation and other poverty alleviation activities should be incorporated in the crusade.

Have we been able to incorporate research into efforts to stop desertification?
To some extent research findings have been utilised towards controlling desertification. But a lot of research has to be conducted so as to find more sustainable ways of dealing with the menace.

What are the statistics on research findings used in addressing desertification and how have they helped?
Most of biological and mechanical measures of combating desertification are products of research conducted by academicians, non-governmental organisations, international organisations and other related government institutions.  

Is the encroaching desert a sign of climate change?
No doubt about it. The impact of climate change also affects the rate of desertification in Nigeria due to the decrease in the annual precipitation, depletion of underground water and drying of lakes and dams.

Government in the past initiated a lot of programmes to stop the encroachment, why is it still coming?
It is probably that the programmes were ill-timed, like the launching of the annual tree planting campaigns which is mostly done in the middle or towards the end of the rainy season instead of at the onset of the season or the projects were abandoned before completion. Inappropriate technology or disintegrated approach to combating desertification could also be a factor of the previous programmes’ failure.

Recently the federal government launched the Great Green Wall programme. How will this help in the fight against desert encroachment?
If the Great Green Wall programme is holistically implemented, it will not only combat desertification, it will also tackle the issue of poverty through the various empowerment packages contained in the programme. The programme is targeted to address socio-economic problems in addition to the environmental issue. If we consider the anthropogenic factors of causing desertification, we could say poverty is playing a key role in fuelling the situation. We therefore envisage proper implementation of the programme so as to achieve the desired objectives.

Government allocated N16 billion to the Great Green Wall Project. How best can this money be used to bring about result?
This money could be greatly utilised if the action plan of the project is followed as designed. The managers of the project have the responsibility to judiciously use these resources in an effort to actualise the set objectives of the programme.