Argungu, Nigeria

Wednesday June 17, 2025

By Leslie FAUVEL

The stories of life along the Matan Fada River in northwestern Nigeria are like legends. The crocodiles don’t come out of the water on Fridays. Fifty years ago, all you had to do was bend down to catch the fish, which were so plentiful they even fell from trees.

What’s certain is that the hippos that used to populate the river are gone. Pelicans no longer stop here on their migration between Europe and Africa, and there’s no longer any fishing for “kumba”, the shell that women used to crush to make the black powder used to make up their eyes.

Safiya Magagi, 61, has spent her whole life in Argungu, a small riverside town. As a child, she liked to wake up early, in the season when migratory birds nested in the region.

“The birds would bring the fish back to their nests to feed their young, and there were so many that they would fall from the trees and we would just have to reach out and retrieve them,” she recalls, while lamenting that “today’s children don’t know that joy”.

In Kebbi State, the days of abundance are over.

“Particularly vulnerable” to the effects of climate change, according to Joseph Daniel Onoja, director of the Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF), this north-western region, at the gateway to the Sahel, is seeing “the desert approaching very rapidly”.

“Rising temperatures and the resulting excessive evaporation” and “lower rainfall” are contributing to the “shrinking of water bodies”, stresses Talatu Tende, an ecologist at the Aplori ornithological research center in Jos, central Nigeria.

As a result, food is becoming scarcer for migratory birds, which “are no longer as numerous or even stop coming altogether”, she adds.

Husaini Makwashi, 42, one of the chiefs of a fishing community in Argungu, confirms that he no longer sees some of these migratory birds.

“The arrival of such a bird meant that the rainy season was approaching, and people were starting to repair their roofs and prepare their fields”, he recalls.

– The river is shrinking –

This savannah region is seeing its landscapes transformed by weather and human activity.

Demographics are soaring in Kebbi State, where the fertility rate is one of the highest in the country. Inhabitants are cutting down more and more trees for firewood.

The countryside has lost its date and karite trees. The huge kapok trees and their cotton-filled fruits, used to make mattresses, have been cut down. What remains are neem trees, mango trees and a few baobabs.

Marshes and waterholes have dried up or been pumped out by farmers for their crops.

Africa only emits 3.8% of the world’s greenhouse gases, but it is severely affected by climate change.

In Argungu, temperatures have exceeded 40°C for the past two months. According to scientists, 2024 is the hottest year ever measured. In West Africa, average temperatures have risen by 1 to 3°C since the 1970s.

With a temperature rise of 2°C, 36.4% of freshwater fish species would be vulnerable to extinction by 2100, predicts the IPCC.

“When rainfall decreases, vegetation becomes scarcer, there is excess evaporation, which makes soils even drier” and alters biodiversity, explains Joseph Daniel Onoja of the NCF.

And when vegetation diminishes, “avian biodiversity, and the human beings who depend on these habitats, are inevitably affected”, he insists.

The Emir of Argungu, Alhaji Samaila Muhammad Mera, regrets that “desertification has swallowed up thousands of arable lands” as well as the disappearance of “many lakes where people used to go fishing”.

To preserve the fish, the traditional chief has imposed restrictions on fishing, which is annoying some locals. “But if nothing is done, life as we know it in this part of the country will cease and people will be forced to migrate”, he fears.

According to the IPCC, fishery resources are the main source of animal protein for around 30% of Africans.

For the time being, it’s still “easy” to be a fisherman in Argungu. The fish, though fewer in number, are still there. But “the river has shrunk” and some species have disappeared, says Ahmed Musa, a 25-year-old fisherman.

– Food insecurity –

For farmers near the river, irrigation is easy and harvests satisfactory, thanks to “fertilizers and pesticides”.

But for those further away, the situation is deteriorating.

“We used to harvest a hundred bags of millet from this field, but now we can barely manage sixty,” explains 30-year-old Murtala Danwawa. In the past, it could “rain non-stop for a week” at the height of the rainy season.

So, during the lean season, he abandons his fields and grows sugarcane in the small waterhole nearby, selling it to feed his family.

In Africa, climate change has reduced agricultural productivity by almost 34% since the 1960s, more than in any other region of the globe, according to the IPCC.

By 2025, 33 million of Nigeria’s 220 million inhabitants will face severe food insecurity, according to UN forecasts.

Humaniterre with AFP