World Bank/Flickr
Rice grains in a bowl, Nigeria. Thousands of acres of country's rice fields have been destroyed by 2022 flooding, causing rice prices to jump.
As world leaders gather at the resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt for the COP 27 United Nations climate conference, the ongoing flooding in Nigeria, which has wreaked havoc across the country, is a cruel reminder that climate change is already a catastrophic reality for many African countries.
Beginning in late September, the worst floods to hit Nigeria since 2012 have overrun hundreds of communities. Thirty-three out of Nigeria’s thirty-six states—representing a whopping 92 percent of the entire country's landmass—have been affected—some are still completely submerged. So far, more than 600 people have been killed and 1.4 million people displaced, 60 percent of whom are children.
Now, as many fear, the worst famine in decades may be underway. The flooding started at the beginning of a harvest season many had hoped would curb an economic crisis that has seen food inflation rise to 23 percent. Some of the affected states are agrarian economies and account for a range of the nation’s food products like yams, sweet potatoes, rice, cocoa, vegetables, maize, cotton, groundnuts, and sorghum.
More than 392,399 hectares of farmland have been destroyed by the flooding. Olam Nigeria, which produces a quarter of Nigeria’s rice, lost about 10,000 acres of its farmland to the flood, causing a shortfall that has led to a spike in prices. At the moment, the price of a 110-pound bag of rice has jumped by 40.8 percent, to about $109, in a country where the national monthly minimum wage is about $68.
The flood has also impacted Nigeria’s oil sector, leading to shortages of petroleum as tankers are stuck because of submerged highways and collapsed bridges. Last month, the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Company declared force majeure, citing the disruption of the gas supply due to widespread flooding.
The Nigerian government has said that unusually heavy rains and climate change are to blame. Officials also blame the emergency release of excess water from the Kainji and Shiroro dams as well as Lagbo dam in neighboring Cameroon, but experts say this is a one-sided account of the situation. According to Zikora Ibeh, who heads policy and research at Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (a Pan-African organization that works to promote human rights and build community power), an additional factor in the flooding is “government irresponsibility which manifests in poor spatial planning and infrastructure.”
While the early warning system worked, with flood alerts issued as early as February, different accounts indicate that many local authorities failed to act, leaving residents on their own to relocate from flood-prone areas in time.
This was the fate of Audu Abubakar, a forty-five-year-old teacher from a town in southern Nigeria whose home sank underwater in late September. “I lost my home and my school,” he tells The Progressive. “Now I am jobless. I have nothing to feed my family.” Abubaker and his family of four have taken shelter alongside others at a nearby seminary that now serves as a makeshift camp for flood victims.
As the situation in Nigeria shows, African leaders have as much responsibility as the Global North to mitigate the climate catastrophe taking place.
Ibeh, the researcher who was part of a team that authored a recent report assessing the COP 26 commitments and Africa’s climate change ambitions, believes Nigeria’s topography and extensive water bodies also increase the likelihood of devastating floods. “Nigeria is located downstream of the River Niger basin,” she tells The Progressive. Eight other countries in the basin are located upstream. This means whenever there is rainfall, the flow of water from other countries in the basin largely channels towards the direction of Nigeria.”
But as Peluola Adewale, an activist and the national mobilization officer of Joint Action Front, a pro-labor civil society group, explains, “The blame is not so much the release of excess water from Cameroon but failure by successive [Nigerian] governments to build [infrastructure] to cushion the effect.” A dam located in northeast Nigeria, for example, is meant to collect excess water released by Cameroonian authorities. Official corruption and neglect, however, have led to this dam remaining “under construction” for forty years.
This is a classic demonstration of how poor governance in Sub-Saharan Africa interacts with natural and anthropogenic factors to precipitate devastating climate crises. Meanwhile, much of the debate at COP 27 will focus on how the Global North can take responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. The African group of negotiators already has a suite of demands to present at the global conference, ranging from loss and damage to the use of gas as a transitional energy source and a “Debt For Climate” swap.
As the situation in Nigeria shows, African leaders have as much responsibility as the Global North to mitigate the climate catastrophe taking place. It will take more than grandstanding at COP every year to begin to address the climate emergency on the continent. While it is crucial to call out the Global North for its hypocrisy towards the climate emergency, failure to atone for its responsibility for global warming, and pay for loss and damage, African campaigners also need to pay attention to the actions of African governments, which are no less inexcusable.
For instance, an important issue going forward is how to ensure that developing countries’ climate commitment financing, estimated to be between $140 billion and $300 billion, is not looted. Corruption is an “undeclared pandemic” on the continent, with the African Union reporting and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa saying that the continent has lost more than $1 trillion to illicit financial flows over the last fifty years. This is roughly equal to the amount of development assistance Africa has received during that time.
As the outcome of COP 27 hangs in the balance, African climate campaigners must know their work does not end in Sharm El-Sheikh. Rather, it starts the day after, in order to ensure that whatever concessions may be won at the conference are translated into concrete and implementable actions. Climate financing must not go to enriching the continent’s corrupt elite while leaving hundreds of communities to fend for themselves on the frontlines of the climate catastrophe.