IRIN Focus on soil erosion in the southeast

For centuries, life in Achina, a rural community of some 30,000 people in southeastern Nigeria’s Anambra State, revolved around the Ezekoro Valley. It was not only the source of a much valued spring on whose water people depended but also the home of the community god. The stretch of rain forest covering about 5 sq.km around the valley was regarded as sacred and the trees were never cut. Area residents say reverence for the Ezekoro Forest declined over the past six decades as Christianity made inroads into the community, winning more and more converts. Today, adherents of the traditional religion have become a tiny minority and more than 90 percent of the forest has been cut down in the space of 30 years, exposing the loamy soil below. When the rainy season’s downpours came last year, the Ezekoro Valley experienced a massive landslide that buried the source of the spring. While most wealthy people in the community have private boreholes in their compounds, the poor majority now depend on rain water running off rusty zinc roofs and other sources, such as unwholesome streams. “What has happened in Achina is typical of the phenomenon of soil erosion currently sweeping much of outheastern Nigeria,” Cletus Echeruo, a geologist who has assesed the site, told IRIN. “One hundred years ago more than 80 percent of the region was covered by dense rain forests, but today more than 90 percent of the rain forests have been cut down, with terrible consequences for the soil.” Echeruo said the process which eventually results in massive landslides usually starts with deforestation and is accelerated by practices such as bush burning. When a bush is burnt the heat destroys vital nutrients in the soil and loosens it, he said. The next stage is sheet erosion, when floods wash away the topsoil. If nothing is done at this stage, gully erosion results - especially if there is a slope - ultimately leading to landslides. “Over 70 percent of the land in southeastern Nigeria is threatened, and more than 20 percent of ancestral and agricultural lands have been destroyed by landslides, sheet and gully erosion,” Uzo Egbuche of the Lagos-based Centre for Environmental Resources and Sustainable Ecosystems (CE-RASE) told IRIN. Of the 10 states in southeastern Nigeria, the worst hit by erosion is Anambra. A study commissioned by the state government in 1993 identified more than 150 major gully erosion sites, some of which had developed into canyons. Some of the worst sites are located between the neighbouring communities of Agulu and Nanka which have become tourist attractions. Each year, thousands of people visit the area to marvel at the ravages of nature. The inhabitants of the affected communities now live in permanent danger. “In all these localities, this disastrous monster of indescribable dimension has rendered people homeless and destroyed farms worth millions of naira,” said Egbuche. “The people have resigned themselves to the whims of the monster. “They never know where and when a gully or a landslide will spring up. There have been instances where children left at home by their parents who went to the farm were swept away along with domestic animals and their properties.” The problem is compounded by the massive pressure on land, she explained. Anambra state, for instance, is very densely populated, with up to 1,000 people per km2 in some areas. As a result, farming and other socio-economic activities are intensive. Over the past two decades, successive Nigerian governments have been aware of the problem, but have done nothing significant to arrest it. In the early 1980s, the then civilian government established an ecology fund to be used to address problems such as soil erosion in the south and desertification in the north. However, the money was often mismanaged or misapplied, according to information that emerged from a recent parliamentary hearing initiated by President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government on the management of the fund. During the hearing, it was revealed, for example, that under the military regimes of late General Sani Abacha and his successor, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, part of the fund was spent on furnishing the official quarters of top government officials. A special monitoring committee has now been set up to ensure that the funds are correctly spent. But with the ravages of erosion so widespread in southeastern Nigeria, the approaching rainy season is being viewed with trepidation by many in the affected areas. The Anambra state commissioner for housing and environment, Nkwo Nnabuchi, expressed the view of many in a recent interview with the News Agency of Nigeria. “I and the people of Anambra pray to God to intervene by not allowing the rains to be too heavy, as they would worsen the erosion problem and degrade our soil further,” he said. However, few people are likely to believe that prayer alone will do.