THE RAINY SEASON IS UPON US
Nick Dazang
Barring the vagaries of the weather, we can safely say that the rainy season is upon us. And thanks to vast improvements in satellite technology, weather can be forecast with more certainty than years gone by.
For us, the advent of the rainy season has many implications. It is a season, both of renewal and great expectations. It is a season when land is cultivated. It is a season when seeds are planted. It is a season when plants are nurtured and tended. It is a season of promise. Like the woman heavy with child, it is a season that looks forward to a safe delivery. It is a season that leads to a bountiful harvest.
For us, this time around, it must, unfortunately, be a season of foreboding and trepidation. According to the Nigerian Meteorological Agency(NiMet), Nigeria is most likely to experience erratic rainfall in 2024. As if that was not bad enough, the agency also disclosed that thirty-one States of the federation will experience flooding. If the torrential rainfall being witnessed in East Africa is to serve as a harbinger, we must prepare for a worse-case scenario.
But even more dreadful is that rather than for the impending rainy season to herald a plentiful harvest, it may produce a lean one. As at now, not less than 3.6 million Nigerians are hunkered down in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps strewn across the country. Most of these IDPs are farmers who have fled their farms on account of banditry, kidnapping, insurgency and savage attacks by land grabbers.
Just last week, a former Governor of Sokoto State, Attahiru Bafarawa, regaled the country with his traumatic experience. According to him, “I used to have a farm land which is over 10,000 hectares in Birnin Gwari of Kaduna State. I have been cultivating that land since 1979 but I cannot reach there now because of the bandits. The maize I produced that time … I used part of it for my flour mill which is out of production.”
Bafarawa’s poignant tale of woe is an apt metaphor for what affects farmers, large and small, in the vast killing fields of Northern Nigeria. If farmers have not been forced off their lands, they have to take permission from mendacious bandits, and for good measure, pay tax in lieu of tilling their lands. At harvest time, the farmers are once more taxed by the marauders. Worse, the bandits, in spite of these cynical taxes, determine which lands are to be cultivated.
The consequences of these acts of wickedness are that most of the farms are abandoned across the entire North and that even where farmers are allowed to farm, the quantity they can produce is severely limited. The costs they incur, via illicit taxation, foisted rough shod by the bandits, are eventually passed onto the buyer. The long and short of it is that fewer lands are being cultivated at the end of the day. As a result of this, much less food is supplied to the market and at a higher cost.
When you add the impending flood that will visit us to the above bleak scenario, the picture becomes a scary one. Little wonder, REUTERS news agency has said that inflation will increase in 2025. REUTERS’s raison d’etre or justification for this increase is that:”High food price inflation is as a result of flooding seen in many parts of the country in recent years, the rising cost of fertilizer and continuing insecurity in many food-producing regions”.
On account of prolonged insurgency, the North Eastern States of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe have witnessed acute malnutrition in the past few years. This is likely to intensify and to spread to the North West and North Central geopolitical zones which are presently in the grip of insurgency, kidnapping and vicious attacks by land grabbers.
When looked at holistically, the picture before us is more than ghoulish or nightmarish: It represents a clear and present danger to the survival and security of the country. It is against this dire background that governments, federal, state and local, must continue to prioritize security. Our armed forces and security agencies should be muscularly empowered to take the war to the terrorists and to decimate them in their numbers. That way, these insurgents and terrorists will no longer constitute a threat to our farmers and our collective security.
By the same token, the millions of farmers, who are either huddled in IDP camps or taking refuge in other safe havens, should be encouraged to return to their farms. Their houses and food barns, which were razed by these vile bandits, should be rebuilt without delay. Seedlings and fertilizers should be made available to them. Our agronomists and other agricultural experts, working with data and informed by the menace of climate change, should guide these farmers to plant seeds, which yields, will withstand the uncertainty of erratic rainfall and a likely shortened rainy season.
Additionally, the government should put in place armed rangers to protect these farmers from the menace of marauders. These agricultural rangers should be
trained to work in concert with other security agencies and to escalate threats which are beyond their remit and capacities.
Photo Credit: Premium Times
