ENVIRONMENT-NIGERIA: Poor Rains, Poor Yields Affect Food Security

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

OGORI, Nigeria, Jul 3 1998 (IPS) - Each year, the second Saturday of June is set aside by this community, some 750 kilomemtres north of Nigeria’s commercial capital of Lagos, to celebrate the new yam festival.

In bumper years, the community displays large tubers of new yams, winning prizes of simple farm implements from the government during the agricultural shows. But this year’s ceremony was more solemn.

There were no sounds of pestle and mortars in the homes of this farming community of about 20,000 inhabitants, who usually prepare pounded yams at the end of each festival. Poor rains this season yielded no harvest.

Farmers blame the scanty rains on the unfavourable weather phenomenon known as the El-Nino.

“The rains refused to fall this season, prompting the yam seedlings planted between November and December to wither,” says James Ogeyin, a local official here.

According to him, the rains came in late May, by which time almost all their crops, including yam and cassava, had dried up. “As a result, there is nothing to celebrate this year except hunger and famine,” he says.

“We are faced with hunger this year. We were told there was a similar incident in the 1950s when many people died as a result of famine, but we have not reached that stage yet,” says 35-year-old Ogeyin who is also a farmer here.

The El Nino phenomenon, which causes excessive rains or drought as in the case of Nigeria, is not only confined to Ogori, but also to parts of the country where crop failures have been reported.

One of the farmers, Dele Biodun, who owns a two-acre farmland, has lost all the maize he planted in February.

“The corn germinated but soon dried up when the rains stopped. I had to replant again around the end of May when the rains started falling in trickles,” says Biodun, who is also a government official in Abeokuta, a city some 120 kilometres northwest of Lagos.

Nigeria, with over 100 million mouths to feed, is endowed with two seasons. The wet season starts in April and lasts until October. The dry season begins in November, except in the south where some showers are experienced between February and March.

The farmers’ problem is further compounded by the fact that Nigeria, with a total land size of 923,768 square kilometres, depends more on rain and natural wetlands for farming than irrigation.

The changes in weather conditions have led to dry vegetations and the emergence of pests in the north of the country, with its attendant effects on nomads who have migrated to wetlands to feed their cattle. Pests – mostly army worms – have invaded farmlands in Katsina and Bauchi States in the north, destroying crops and fuelling further fears of poor harvest.

Experts attribute the invasion to the inadequate rainfall in the region and advised farmers not to weed their farmlands of grasses to prevent the army worms from feeding on their crops.

The Director of the Katsina State Agricultural Services, Almu Boyi, says the worms will disappear as soon as the rainfalls steady.

His colleague, entymologist Buba Mohammed, urged farmers to feed the pests to their chicken and fowls. “By this option,” says Mohammed, “the farmers will be doing two things, solving the problem of army worms and solving the problem of feeding their fowls and chickens.”

Food security in cities like Lagos is already being threatened by the dry spell as tomatoes, peppers, onions and vegetables ususally imported from the hinterlands have disappeared.

“We cannot get tomatoes or pepper as the Hausas (an ethnic group in the north) who bring the crops are complaining that lack of rain has affected production,” says Bidemi, a housewife in Lagos.

The scarcity has resulted in the increase in the prices of the items. For example, a can of tomatoes, which cost 25 kobo early this year, now sells for 35 kobo.

The National President of Practising Farmers, Murtala Nyako, has attributed the dwindling yield to the effects of erosion, desertification and pest invasion, which he says, has demoralised farmers in their efforts to salvage the country from imminent hunger.