This week, President Buhari was in Paris with other world leaders for a climate change summit during which measures to address the environmental challenges of the future were debated. At the gathering, President Buhari made it clear that the rest of the world needed to save Lake Chad and the communities dependent on it as it is in danger of running dry.
Lake Chad provides water to more than 68m people living in the four countries surrounding it including Chad, Cameroon, Niger Republic and Nigeria. Because Lake Chad is very shallow, only 10.5 metres at its deepest, its area is particularly sensitive to small changes in average depth and consequently it also shows seasonal fluctuations in size of about 1 m every year.
Because of the way the lake has shrunk dramatically in recent decades, it has been labelled an ecological catastrophe by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. In addition, human population expansion and unsustainable water extraction have caused several natural species to be stressed and threatened from declining lake levels.
Speaking on the sidelines of the UN Climate Change Conference at a special session titled Climate Change Challenges and Solutions in Africa, President Buhari said no fewer than 5m people living in the Lake Chad Basin countries had been displaced by its depletion due to climate change. He added that the shrinking of Lake Chad had resulted in increased social conflicts, high rates of migration and cross border movements.
President Buhari said: “Nigeria has a large population of over 170m people and in some parts of northern Nigeria, a farm that used to belong to 10 people now belongs to over 100 people. They have no other place to live and no land for cultivation.
He recalled that a research conducted by a professor in a London university and published more than three decades ago had predicted that unless one or some of the rivers from the Central African region were diverted to empty into the Lake Chad basin, it would dry up. President Buhari noted sadly that the prediction had become reality as the lake which covered over 25,000 square km in 1925 has shrunk to 2,500 square km today.
“The amount of resources required and the high technological expertise and infrastructure needed to be undertaken to revive the Lake Chad has to be mainly financed by the G7 and the United States. The cost is great and more than $14bn is needed to revive the Lake and if that is achieved, at least 5m people from Central African Republic to the Lake Chad Basin countries will be rehabilitated.
“When this is done those who are daring to cross the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean to come to Europe will remain at home because they have land where they can cultivate and earn a respectable living,’’ President Buhari said. Recognising the acute threats that climate change posed to Nigeria’s development, he said his administration was ready to embrace several opportunities presented by the challenges.
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