As Nigeria commendably begins the evacuation of its citizens from war-torn Ukraine, President Muhammadu Buhari has said that his administration will not relent in its duty to defend the interest of Nigerians, wherever they may be.
It would be recalled that thousands of foreigners, especially students, are trapped by the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.
In some cases, foreigners living in Ukraine have faced unequal treatment and delays as they attempted to flee the war alongside hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians.
Dozens of foreign nationals, many of them international students, revealed a pattern of blocking or delaying foreigners from boarding buses and trains, apparently to prioritise evacuating Ukrainian women and children.
Ukraine has long been a destination for students and immigrants from around the world. It is said that from 2020, 80,000 international students were in the country, with the largest groups from India, Morocco, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Nigeria.
These students and people from numerous countries who immigrated to Ukraine for work, now find themselves desperately trying to get out of a war zone.
The President spoke, recently, in Nairobi, Kenya, during a Townhall Meeting with a group of Nigerians resident in the country.
“As a Government, we shall continue to defend the interests of all Nigerians…,” he said. “We have demonstrated this over time, as we have had cause to evacuate our citizens in harm’s way abroad.”
The President listed Libya and South Africa where Nigeria evacuated its citizens from when they faced danger, something Nigerians now face in Ukraine.
A Nigerian student was reported as saying that he was among a group of roughly 20 foreigners, including Ecuadorians and Moroccans, who was forced off a train in Kyiv on February 26.
“The police entered and … pulled me and pushed me and asked if I was going to Lviv or Poland,” the student said, adding: “I said Poland and they told me to get out.”
The African Union issued a statement on February 28 urging “all countries to respect international law and show the same empathy and support to all people fleeing war notwithstanding their racial identity.”
Several governments with nationals in Ukraine have expressed concern over their treatment and obstacles to getting out of the country. The Nigerian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffery Onyeama told the media on March 1 that he had spoken with Ukrainian and Polish authorities about the need to ensure that Nigerians get access to cross the border.
In fact, it is on that note that the Buhari-led administration should be commended, for promptly coming to the rescue of Nigerians abroad at the time they needed to be rescued urgently.
Still, the Buhari-led administration should make it clear to the Ukrainian authorities that Nigerians and, indeed, all non-Ukrainian nationals, including people without valid travel documents, must be given access to EU territories to either benefit from temporary protection or on humanitarian grounds, including for safe passage or repatriation to their countries of origin.
EU countries should not return people whose life or freedom would be threatened in Ukraine.
The administration should harp on fashioning an arrangement that should ensure equitable sharing of responsibility by all member states via an efficient and fair relocation plan that takes into account family ties and, insofar as possible, individual preferences.
Multiple approaches needed to arrest desertification
This week, President Muhammadu Buhari, directed collaboration among the Federal Ministry of Environment, Federal Ministry of Water Resources, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Federal Ministry of Power, and other stakeholders to combat desertification in Nigeria.
Desertification is a phenomenon of the impoverishment of the terrestrial ecosystem under the impact of adverse weather and population activities.
Again, the President spoke in Nairobi, Kenya, during a sideline meeting with Mr Ibrahim Thiaw, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
The occasion was the Special Session of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP@50).
The President said collaboration should also include the 11 states prone to drought and desert encroachment and the programme should be spearheaded by the Northern Governors Forum.
The President equally directed full cooperation between Nigeria and UNCCD in the prelude to the forthcoming meeting to combat desertification billed for Cote D’Ivoire in May 2022.
While the appreciated effort of the President to restore the environment, it should be noted that forests are disappearing at an alarming rate in Nigeria. Of the forests that existed in 2007 in the area where Action Against Desertification operates, only half remained 10 years later.
If that situation is unfortunate, it should also be noted that although the land is one of the most cherished resources of Nigeria, it is often taken for granted to the extent that not much care is given to adverse conditions that affect this vital resource either through man-made causes or natural phenomena.
The land is a symbol of identity in most African countries, a means of cultural affiliation, social and economic survival.
The resources endowment associated with the land makes it attractive for human settlement, while the absence of same makes such land uninhabitable.
It is against this background that we must appreciate the magnitude of the degradation of the land through the impact of climate change and man-made causes in various parts of Nigeria. And also appreciate what the President plans to do to restore the land.
The Northern part of Nigeria is endowed with a large expanse of arable land that has, over the years, proved a vital resource for agriculture and other economic activities. But the Sahara desert is advancing southwards at the rate of 6.0 per cent every year.
Consequently, Nigeria loses about 350,000 hectares of land every year to desert encroachment. This has led to demographic displacements in villages across 11 states in the North.
It is estimated that Nigeria loses about $5.1bn every year owing to the rapid encroachment of drought and desert in most parts of the North.
The progressive deterioration of the fertile land and loss of its productive capacity renders it unsuitable for human and animal habitation.
The United Nations defines desertification as the delimitation or destruction of the biological potential of land which can lead to desert-like conditions.
It has been discovered that the Sahara Desert is advancing southwards at the rate of 0.6 kilometres per annum resulting in the loss of about 55% of landmass to the desert and displacement of farmers in villages of the affected states.
Experts believe that an estimated area of 75 million hectares of land in the North is threatened by desertification. This situation portends grave danger to food security in Nigeria and in the ECOWAS sub-region.
There are no clear cut explanations of the origin of desert encroachment, but it is generally attributed to demographic activities especially the felling of trees, burning of bushes for farming, adverse climatic conditions such as erosion of the surface of the earth through wind storms and movement of sand dunes.
Perhaps the best way to understand the impact of drought and desertification can be seen in the massive death of persons, cattle and vegetation in Northern Nigeria and other parts of West African countries in 1973-1975, which became an international issue at that time.
The Buhari administration in 1984, launched a tree-planting campaign in Nigeria as a way to bring to national consciousness the dangers of rapid depletion of the nation’s vegetation and the need to adopt a more sustainable use of forest resources by replanting trees to recover the fading cultivatable lands owing to desert encroachment.
It must be observed that the failure in agriculture production, forces people in the affected villages to migrate to more favourable areas, thereby creating new settlements where they have to compete with the indigenous population for the scarce resources.
A careful study of the migratory trend in Nigeria shows that there has been a significant displacement of numerous farming and nomadic population in Yobe State is said to be one of the worst affected areas in northern Nigeria. Sand dunes are encroaching at a rate of 30 hectares a year, taking over villages.
Other affected areas include Borno, Bauchi, Gombe, Adamawa, Jigawa, Kano, Katsina, Zamfara, Sokoto and Kebbi states.
The signs of desertification include soil erosion, rain shortages and drought. This threatens the livelihoods of over 55 million people which is equivalent to the combined population of Mali, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Mauritania.
The forests in northern Nigeria have almost vanished and the process of deforestation seems to be moving steadily southwards.
Thus, while the Action Against Desertification supports Nigeria’s Great Green Wall interventions in a few communities in the northern parts of Bauchi, Jigawa and Sokoto state, clearly, as the President said, Nigeria needs to do more to contain desertification.
The government needs to encourage processes like covering bare soil, and keeping it covered, with living or dead plant material (litter) is key to restoring soil health and the biggest hope for immediate salvation from desertification because it is relatively easy to provide soil cover, which in turn leads to an increase in organic matter.
Any increase in soil organic matter, also, greatly increases the rate of water infiltration and retention in soil. The amount of water that can be held in the ground through healthy, covered soils dwarfs the storage in the World’s largest dams.
