There have been reports in recent years regarding experts’ assessment that the Lake Chad is receding at alarming rate, threatening over 30 million people who depend on it for their livelihoods. The body of water is so crucial to regional peace and stability that the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) was set up decades ago to oversee its and other resource usage.

So it would no doubt be gladdening news that president elect, General Muhammadu Buhari has pledged to commit resources, in partnership with neighbours, to salvage the receding lake.

According to the assessment, Lake Chad has diminished in area and depth over the last 50 years, with no apparent response mechanism to stop it.

Apart from Nigerians, over 40 million Africans on the Lake’s shoreline and its surrounding basin are directly dependent on the water and its resources.

From 1964, when the Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Niger formed the LCBC to manage the existing waters of the lake and its tributaries, it has shrunk by 90 percent from a surface area of 25,000 to today’s estimate of 2,000 as a result of several decades of droughts and desertification caused by shortage of rainfall, high winds and temperature rise in the Sahel region. Virtually all the wetlands in the region are either dried up or on the verge of doing so.

As the Lake diminishes, the population has been forced to migrate and adjust to even less tenable conditions, criss-crossing national boundaries in the process. Farmers and fishermen subsist on this shrinking body of water, with over 58,000 inhabitants, predominantly Chadian and Nigerian, residing on islands in the Lake.

The problem would have been less herculean to handle if regional governments had taken proactive measures in the past to anticipate and address it. Nothing short of an emergency declared by a summit of heads state and government of members of the LCBC would be sufficient to deal with this very serious issue. There should be a massive plan of action to save and replenish the Lake.
Otherwise the already high levels of poverty in the region would further rise, exacerbating discontents and restiveness among people, degrading the fragile ecosystem and triggering mass population displacements as environmental refugees, and worsening the social and security challenges in the entire region and beyond.
Some steps were taken to save the lake in 1994, when the Inter Basin Water Transfer (IBWT) from Ubangi River in Central African Republic (CAR) to the Lake Chad was identified as a viable option leading to a feasibility which will costs over $6 million.

The Summit of Heads of States of the LCBC in 2002 in Ndjamena approved a five-year investment plan to improve the conveyance of the Chari River and the development of Lake Chad and to carry out studies to establish interactions between ground water and manmade rivers.

The plan was to take place as an initial step before the actual water transfer project, and it was expected to pave way and facilitate the smooth implementation of the IBWT, at a cost of $14 million.

Both the African Development Bank and the Islamic Development Bank expressed interest in the project then. However, the member states of the Congo-Ubangi-Sangha Basin International Commission, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Congo Republic and the Central African Republic expressed concern that the project would reduce the energy potential of the Inga hydroelectric dam, affect navigation on the Ubangi and Congo rivers and also reduce their fish stocks. Not surprising, such negative response affected the entire plan, virtually grounding it.

However with the recent turnaround, the plan is back on the front burner, with Nigeria releasing $5 million for the feasibility study. Buhari’s comments on the plan would add impetus to the movement towards saving the Lake when he eventually takes office.

Member countries should eschew their previous misgivings and muster the political will to restore the Lake to its original status; the socio-economic benefits are vast, and the multiplier effects almost limitless for the region.

Cc: lalasticlala