Drying Lake Chad puts 30m lives on edge

Monday, 05 September 2011 00:00 Adeola Ajakaiye, Kano

Lake Chad, one of the largest boddies of water in Sub-Saharan Africa, is on the verge of drying up, as only 1,500 square kilometres,  of the original 25,000 square kilometres size of the lake still remain.
The figure represents 10 percent of the initial size of the lake, which traverses Nigeria and three other neighboring countries - Chad , Niger , and the Republic of Cameroon.
The lake, which banks in Nigeria , in the north-astern state of Borno, with Maiduguri as its administrative capital, is said to share similar hydrological basin with four other countries: Central African Republic, Algeria , Sudan and Libya.

Experts are of the view that at the rate at which the lake is shrinking, it might become mere dry land in the next 20 years.

Data obtained from the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC), a multilateral agency, established by countries sharing the body of water, to manage its resources, revealed that before now, the lake covered an area larger than Israel.

“This is a staggering prospect when it is remembered that at the time of Nigeria `s political independence, the lake covered an area larger than the size of the state of Israel . Today only less than 10 percent of that size remains.

“If Lake Chad dries up, 30 million people will have no means of livelihood, and that is a big security problem because of growing competition for smaller quantities of water.
“Poverty and hunger will increase, when there is no food to eat, there is bound to be violence” Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, immediate past Executive Secretary of the organisation, said recently.

Commenting on the development, Bassey Nnimmo, who is the Executive Director, Environmental Rights Action/Friends of The Earth, Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), during a media training workshop held in Kano , recently, stated that the implication of the lake drying up would be grave for the country.
“The implication of the drying of Lake Chad is already obvious in the displacement of fishermen, pasturalists and others, who depend on its water. The future is bleak, unless the root cause of this phenomenon is tackled.
“It may even be the case that the recurring land crises in the middle-belt, and in Maiduguri area, in particular, can be traced to the environmental displacement of populations in these areas and the religious colouration may well be a convenient cover for perpetrators of intolerance” Nnimmo proffered.
Yagana Bukar, a senior lecturer, department of Geography, at the University of Maiduguri , said that the drying up of Lake Chad is responsible for the growing water scarcity being experienced in the north- eastern part of the country.
She said the development was causing severe hardship, particularly to women and children.
Bukar, who is a gender and environmental specialist, observed in her presentation on the water situation in Borno State, at recent workshop, that in some settlements in the state, women and children, now trek as much as five miles to get water.
It would be recalled that LCBC, the multilateral agency charged with the management of Lake Chad, had initiated an action plan that would lead to the construction of a canal, to supply water from the River Congo, in Central African Republic , to the lake.
The project, which is expected to cost member countries of the LCBC, several billions of naira, is however still at conception stage, as the project is being hampered by financial constraint.
Analysts are calling on stakeholders to speed up the actualisation of the project, in order to resuscitate the Lake , and prevent it from drying up.

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