Kwara communities suffer deforestation, land degradation after departure of White Zimbabwe farmers

In 2004, some displaced white farmers from Zimbabwe arrived in agrarian communities in the Shonga district of Edu Local Government Area of Kwara State on the invitation of the state government. The governor of the state at the time, Bukola Saraki, said they were invited to revolutionise agricultural practice and enhance the government’s agro-economy initiative. About 20 years after, PREMIUM TIMES’ Yakubu Mohammed visited some of these communities, where he found local farmers enduring the brunt of government-backed deforestation and land degradation as they contended with the worsening food crisis ravaging the country.

Abdullahi Jubril, a local farmer in Dumagi, one of the villages affected by the takeover of land by the Kwara State Government in 2004, now struggles to cater for his family from a small portion of farmland he said has been overused and barely gives him enough yields.

Before 2004, Mr Jubril practised a mixed-crop farming system, planting guinea corn, millet, melons, yam, groundnut, and other grains. However, he said, the arrival of white Zimbabwean farmers facilitated by the Kwara State Government under the Shonga agricultural project threatened local farmers like him.

Findings by PREMIUM TIMES showed that the state government acquired 13,000 hectares of land covering vast farmlands with economic trees.

Subsequently, the government apportioned 4,755 hectares of the land to local farmers in a buffer zone set some 500 metres away from each of the affected villages.

This, however, rendered many local farmers helpless, including their wives, who relied on the economic trees to make daily earnings. The farmers say the new farmland apportioned to them “was no longer fertile.”

Annual shrinking yields worsen food crisis

In separate interviews, this reporter spoke to 13 local farmers in Shonga, Ndakansa, Dumagi, Sanchitagi and Faigi villages, all in the northern part of Kwara State. They shared similar stories of declining annual yields as some sought alternative livelihoods.

They explained that their farmlands are no longer fertile for crops like yam, guinea corn and melon.

This trend, they believe, is worsening the food crisis in the state.

Mr Jubril, who holds the traditional title of ‘Waziri Dumagi’, said he was one of the top yam farmers in the village.

“In those days, I would plant yams and harvest more than ten tractor trolleys,” he said. “I would then sell some and reserve the rest for my family.”

Last year, Mr Jubril planted yams, beans and soybeans, but the yields were distressing, he said.

“I did not get enough yields, especially from the beans and yams,” he said, blaming the outcome on the reduced fertility of his farmland.

“I only got about 100 tubers of yams and that was not up to half of a tractor trolley. As for the beans, I planted ten ‘mudus’ but harvested 16 in return.”

According to him, such an input should give him at least 12 bags of beans (over 400 mudus).

Jibrin Mohammed is a young farmer in Ndakansa, a village encircled by over 3,000 hectares of land appropriated for the White farmers.

Mr Mohammed, who now farms a piece of land behind his house, said he used to produce more than 30 bags of maize and guinea corn before the government seized his farmland.

“Now, I struggle to get as little as two or three bags,” he grumbled as he took this reporter around his “overused” farm. “I will have to feed my family from the little yield I got and take the rest to the market to sell, of course, at a high price to be able to purchase other foods and meet our basic needs.”

All the farmers blame the limited size of farmland they were given compared to what they had before the 2004 government project for their woes. They also said the farmlands they were given were not as fertile as their previous farms.

However, the Acting Manager of Shonga Farms Holding Ltd, Ibrahim Kolawole, believes the farmers are being affected by improper land preparation and management.

“Farming is a process, and if, for instance, you didn’t do your land preparation correctly, taking in context the kind of crop you want to plant, it may affect your yields,” Mr Kolawole told PREMIUM TIMES in Ilorin, the state capital.

The acting general manager cited soybeans as an example and said there is no need to make ridges to plant the crop.

Food inflation on the rise

Food inflation has plagued Nigeria in recent years, with the highest rate recorded under President Bola Tinubu since he removed the petroleum subsidy, adding to climatic and security factors already affecting food production.

According to years-long analysis of National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data by Twentyten, food inflation reached its peak (29.34 per cent) in 15 years in August last year.

“This is significantly higher than the food inflation rate during the administrations of Muhammadu Buhari (23.12 per cent in August 2022), Goodluck Jonathan (9.96 per cent in August 2014), and Umaru Yar’Adua (12.7 per cent in August 2009),” the data organisation stated.

In its recent data, NBS revealed that Nigeria’s food inflation has continued on a steady rise, reaching 40.01 per cent in March 2024 on a year-on-year basis, 15.56 percentage points higher than the rate recorded in March 2023 (24.45 per cent). The March 2024 figure is also higher than the 37.90 per cent recorded in February 2024.

While the yearly food inflation was blamed on increased prices of some selected foods — bread and cereals, potatoes, yam and other tubers, fish, oil and fat, meat, fruit, coffee, tea, and cocoa – the month-on-month food inflation was attributed to a rise in the average prices of bread and cereals, potatoes, yam and other tubers, fish, coffee, tea, and cocoa.

The situation in Kwara

Between 2022 and 2024, Kwara appeared at least four times among Nigerian states with the highest food inflation rate, according to the NBS reports analysed by PREMIUM TIMES.

In December 2022, the north-central state recorded the highest rate of annual food inflation with 27.90 per cent, ahead of Imo with 26.94 per cent and Ebonyi with 26.28 per cent.

However, in December 2023, Kwara ranked second with 41.33 per cent, leading Imo [39.54 per cent], while Kogi topped the list with 44.73 per cent.

“In December 2023, food inflation on a year-on-year basis was highest in Kogi (44.73 per cent), Kwara (41.33 per cent), and Imo (39.54 per cent),” the NBS stated.

A month later, the state maintained its position, recording 40.87 per cent in annual food inflation as Kogi led with 44.18 per cent while Rivers ranked third with 40.08 per cent.

“In January 2024, food inflation on a year-on-year basis was highest in Kogi (44.18 per cent), Kwara (40.87 per cent), and Rivers (40.08 per cent),” the bureau disclosed.

The following month, Kwara came third having recorded 43.05 per cent in annual food inflation.

“In February 2024, food inflation on a year-on-year basis was highest in Kogi (46.32 per cent), Rivers (44.34 per cent), and Kwara (43.05 per cent),” the bureau stated in its latest report.

Many local farmers who spoke to PREMIUM TIMES said they inflated the price of their limited farm produce so that they could meet other purchasing demands.

Footprints of Zimbabwe White Farmers in Shonga

Thirteen displaced White farmers arrived in the area under a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) project with the state government in 2005. The partnership was first known as Kwa-Zimbo Enterprises. It was renamed as Shonga Farms in 2008 and then as New Nigeria Farms in 2010, according to a 2011 publication.

Each of the 13 farmers was allotted a thousand hectares of land, summing up to the 13,000 hectares acquired by the government using the Land Use Act of 1978. The land was, thereafter, jointly cleared by the foreign farmers and the Kwara State government for infrastructural development and advanced farming system.

Subsequently, the 13 commercial farms were named Farm 1-12 and 17, each with an area of specialisation.

For instance, five farms [2, 6, 7, 9 and 11] mainly specialised in crop production, another four [3,5, 10 and 12] specialised in mixed dairy farming, while the remaining four [1,4,8 and 17] majored in mixed poultry farming.

The mixed dairy and mixed poultry farms also cultivated lands where they planted soybeans, cowpeas, bananas, maize and cassava. They then converted the output into feed for their animals, some locals who had worked on the farms told PREMIUM TIMES.

The dairy farmers imported the Jersey breed of cattle from South Africa in 2008, Mohammed Kudu, a resident of Shonga who worked closely with the white farmers, said. The breed, he added, is heat-tolerant and more efficient in milk production.

The dairy farmers later established a milk processing plant where they collected milk from their dairy farms and local Fulani cattle and converted them into yoghurt and pasteurised milk, further findings showed.

They supplied their products to many entities in Kwara, Oyo and Osun states, including West African Milk Company (WAMCO), a subsidiary of FrieslandCampina of Holland.

Unfortunately, the business did not survive, forcing the farmers out of the country.

Only eight of the 13 white farmers came to Shonga, Mr Kudu and other locals who witnessed their reign told PREMIUM TIMES.

But their stay was short-lived. They left Kwara in batches, citing an unfavourable environment and inadequate government support.

Although the initial white farmers have left Kwara, their impacts are however still being felt by local farmers who blamed the annual flooding affecting their farms on massive deforestation by the foreigners.

Women in the area are also bearing the brunt of deforestation. Many depended on some economic trees — shea butter, cashew and mango among others — to augment their survival. Sadly, they have been living in penury since the forest was depleted.

Fatima Mohammed, a 47-year-old mother of six in Faigi village, remembers the years she used to support her husband with earnings from her shea butter business.

“In some parts of the forest those days, we used to extract a lot from the shea butter trees to make shea butter that we sold outside our village,” she recalled. “But now we are just idle, waiting for what our husbands could get from their farms.”

Some other women, like Aishatu Mohammed, have resorted to helping their husbands during the harvest.

“We follow them to the farm to harvest and process the groundnuts, soybeans and guinea corn they usually plant,” Mrs Mohammed told PREMIUM TIMES as she shelled some nuts in her compound.

The pains that come with rains

Every rain comes with pain for local farmers in the Shonga district. They helplessly watch destructive floods sweep away crops from their farms.

Local farmers like Rabiu Baba, who lives in Shonga town and farms on a piece of land near Dumagi, had to hasten their harvest to avoid losing it to floods.

“Whether they are due for harvest or not, many of us are forced to harvest our farm produce before floods that come with heavy rainfalls,” Mr Baba, who augments his earnings with tailoring, told PREMIUM TIMES.

He believes the damages wouldn’t be as massive as locals have been experiencing had the government spared the trees cut in preparation for the “failed advanced farming.”

The farmers lamented that the mayhem goes beyond rainy seasons, saying the soil lost nutrients as windstorms continued wreaking havoc on standing crops like maise and guinea corn.

The floods did not spare residential houses. From Shonga town to Dumagi, Sanchitagi, Faigi, Ndakansa, Gumbagi and Gboro, PREMIUM TIMES observed the catastrophic effects of flooding on the villages.

While floods have damaged some houses, some are at the verge of collapse.

Impending conflict

As hardship intensifies in the farming communities, PREMIUM TIMES gathered that there is an impending conflict between neighbouring villages over land ownership.

Musa Aliyu, a local chief in Dumagi, said conflicts always ensue between adjoining villages over “who has the right to use a piece of land for farming.”

“The faceoffs are mostly experienced between March and July when farmers cultivate their farmlands,” Mr Aliyu explained, adding that previous cases were managed by village heads to avoid violence.

According to experts, scarce resources — land and water — are the major drivers of violence in banditry-ravaged north-west and some parts of north-central Nigeria.

Local chiefs in the Shonga district have been able to stem the communal conflict before it degenerates into violence.

The villages are also likely to form forces against some investors striving to revive the Shonga Farms project. This was part of the challenges the Zimbabwean farmers faced, especially with locals in Faigi who vehemently resisted them.

Faigi residents believe the resistance worked for them as the government was not able to appropriate their land, although they also experienced the environmental hazards caused by the massive deforestation.

Many local farmers said the 25 years lease of their land to the Zimbabwean farmers would soon expire and they hoped the government would revert the ownership of the land to them.

However, officials of Shonga Farms Holdings Ltd explained that the government would renegotiate the lease with the new investors.

Some local farmers whose lands were seized still grumble over what they described as inadequate compensation by the government.

The village head of Ndakansa, Ibrahim Mohammed, recounted how they were instructed in 2005 to come with sacks to Ilorin, Kwara State capital, to receive their compensation and economic tree benefits.

“We did as they instructed, but many of us came back with just N700,” Mr Mohammed recalled amid constant giggles. “Some were lucky to have N5,000 above. But I doubt if there was anyone that got up to N100,000.”

In addition to the cash token given to some of the farmers, the government also distributed bicycles to them so that they could easily access the new farms situated 500 metres away from their villages.

Reviving Shonga Farms initiative

Many factors threatened the project, including a N1.7 billion loan that led to AMCON’s seizure two years ago. Mr Kolawole, the acting general manager of Shonga Farms Holding Ltd, said the company has been offsetting the loan.

Following the departure of the Zimbabwean farmers, the Kwara State government invited some investors to take over the “assets and liability,” Mr Kolawole explained.

He added that Valentine Chicken, a subsidiary of South African Country Birds Holdings (CBH), acquired Farms 1, 4, 7, 8 and 17, while Godilogo took Farms 3, 9 and 10.

He continued that the remaining four farms [2, 5, 12, and 11] are still under the control of Shonga Farms Holdings Ltd. However, he clarified that the firm was not using them.

“We give them to local farmers to farm at no cost,” Mr Kolawole said, adding the firm may soon start leasing out the land to offset land use charge debts it had incurred over time.

Reacting to the dwindling yields the farmers contend with, Mr Kolawole said the firm will engage stakeholders “to streamline the use of land and discourage tree felling and encourage crop rotation to preserve the land.”

He added that the firm will also encourage farmers to take organic manure from Valentine Chickens “to replenish the nutrients of the land so the yields per hectare can improve.”

Mr Kolawole argued that land degradation cannot be blamed on the project plan alone. He said, “Out of the 13,000 hectares of land, what was cleared was not up to 4,000.”

He blamed the worsening environmental degradation on continued deforestation by the locals for domestic use, furniture making and charcoal business.

“Trees were not felled anyhow,” he said, adding that the layouts of the farms were carefully done to preserve trees that would protect the environment.

When asked about the status of the project, Mr Kolawole noted that it is based on one’s perspective. He, however, believes that it is not a “complete failure or success” making reference to how the investment had drawn its workforce from the local community and improved agricultural practice in the area.

“For some of us, we won’t write it off that it is a failure because when you do the surgical analysis of it, there are traces of benefits that the state is having today which are offshoots of the investment done some 20 years ago,” he told PREMIUM TIMES.

Mr Kolawole said the project would have been better if the necessary attention and support had been given.

“It is a workable project the state can improve on,” he added.

When PREMIUM TIMES visited the farms in March, our reporter observed that only Valentine Chickens was visibly running its business in the area. Although one cow, a Jersey breed, wandered around Farm 10, this was a massive drop-down compared to the over 300 cows that were imported.

In an interview with our reporter, Bertus Kirstein, the managing director of Valentine Chickens, explained that the CBH subsidiary company is an integrated poultry business, specialising in hatchery, breeding, and slaughtering broilers, selling day-old chickens, and distributing frozen chickens across the country.

“The business started on a small scale after it was taken over from the previous farmers that were here,” Mr Kirstein, a South African, told PREMIUM TIMES in his Shonga office, adding that CBH took over the business in 2015 as a major shareholder.

He said the company “hatch out about 300,000 chickens a week and we are processing about 147,000 birds in our abattoir.”

The company, according to Mr Kirstein, is also involved in crop production. “We develop cassava on a small scale, soybeans and maize but our focus is on poultry,” he said.

Like the previous farmers, Valentine Chickens is also facing operational challenges.

Mr Kirstein identified erratic power supply, naira devaluation, higher fuel prices and infrastructural decay as the key factors frustrating the company’s business.

He emphasised that the enterprise mutually benefits the company and the host community, and a large percentage of the firm’s workforce is drawn from the community.