Adamawa

Bello Gambur dreads going to the stream before 2 p.m. 

Every morning, he leaves home with a herd of over 30 cattle, with his staff slung across his shoulders as they head into the bush. For about five hours, he watches them as they graze, rest, and wander, but none can drink. The only stream in the community lies just a short walk away, yet he must wait until 2 p.m. to take them there.

Going earlier, he says, could have deadly consequences.

All his life, the forty-year-old has lived as a herder in Mararaban Bare, a small community in the Numan Local Government Area of Adamawa State, North East Nigeria, where his ancestors migrated and settled a long time ago.  

Over the years, the herders lived in peace with their host community, but in 2017, violence broke out over water. The clash claimed many lives, and several properties were destroyed. In October, security operatives stepped in to quell a similar incident. 

So, Bello doesn’t mind his herd enduring hours of thirst if it helps keep the fragile peace.

He leads the cattle to the stream when most locals have finished using it and are back at their homes. Bello and the other herders go there between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. to prevent coming in contact with the locals who visit the stream every morning to bathe, wash, and fetch water for domestic chores.  

The rationing also requires the locals to leave before 2 p.m. 

However, this arrangement has not ended the clashes between the groups, as locals believe it does little to address deeper grievances.

Tension keeps building 

“Irrigation farmers use the water from the canal to farm. And other community members drink the water, the cattle also drink from it, so this is a problem,” Alphonsus Bosso, a 55-year-old farmer and resident of Mararaban Bare, told HumAngle.

He said the tension is unlikely to end soon, especially with the dry season approaching. This competition for access to the stream intensifies during this period.

Alphonsus said a lasting solution would be to provide the herders with their own water source “because we no longer co-exist”. In some other Adamawa communities, humanitarian organisations have already supported the creation of alternative water sources, which have helped ease similar tensions, a model yet to reach Mararaban Bare.

“We used to have canals that served as water sources for our cattle, and we barely used the stream until the canals began to dry up,” said Muza Alhaji Shenya, a 37-year-old herder in the area. He linked the recent drying up of water bodies in the area to industrial expansion, particularly the construction of embankments to store water for sugarcane plantations. HumAngle saw some of these embankments during a visit.

However, environmental experts say the problem extends beyond industrial activity.

Hamza Muhammed Usman, the Executive Director of Environmental Care Foundation, a non-governmental organisation in Adamawa State that promotes a climate-friendly environment, food security, and peacebuilding, explained that prolonged dry spells, erratic rainfall, and deforestation, among other factors, are responsible for the shrinking water bodies in the state.

He said that overgrazing by livestock and human activities such as excessive farming on the same location and mining reduce vegetation cover, which disrupts the natural flow of water into its channels and bodies, especially in local government areas such as Numan, Fufore, some parts of Madagali, Maiha, Gombi, and the southern zone. 

Hamza also noted that migration and growing birth rates in the affected areas have increased the competition for water. “There are people from Borno, Gombe, Taraba, and other places trooping into Adamawa for greener pastures. This leads to overdependence on the limited resources,” he said. 

‘They pollute the water’

Locals insist that sharing the water with the cattle is unhealthy. 

“The cattle are polluting the water with mud and urine,” said Silas Simon, the community leader. “We dilute the water with alum when we want to consume.”

Even this treatment becomes difficult during the dry season, which starts in October. 

During the season, the herders in Mararaban Bare are left with two options: lead their cattle to the local stream or trek six kilometres into Bare, the nearest village with multiple water sources. The journey takes about six hours, making the local stream the closest option for many.

One herder, who treks to Bare to avoid being attacked by locals, said his cattle often drink water once a day, mostly in the afternoon, and sometimes, in the evening while returning to their settlement. There, water is provided for them in small containers, but much priority is given to the calves since the water is not enough. 

“The cows are getting thinner; their health has deteriorated over the years,” he said. “Every water source is drying up.”

“If we can have alternative water sources, then we won’t go to the stream for water where the people drink from,” Muza said. 

There is a borehole in Mararaban Bare, but it barely functions. 

Silas noted that if the borehole was functional, locals would use it as a water source and leave the stream for the herders, which would reduce the clashes.

“The borehole barely works. If it ever pumps water, it ceases at any time, so one has to wait for hours before the water runs again. Sometimes, people queue up from morning to evening and get unlucky because it ceases anytime,” he said. 

‘No agreement’

Several meetings have been held between the locals and herders to resolve the conflict, but no lasting agreement has been reached apart from a temporary water-use arrangement. Silas said tensions remain high, as youths from both groups often act as the main instigators during clashes.

“We do not wish to provoke anyone; we are only after the welfare of the cattle,” said Alhaji Ngala, the chairperson of herders in the community. He also noted that farms have taken over grazing routes, leaving them with “no freedom”. 

“If we can have access to grazing routes and enough water supply, then our minds will be at peace,” Ngala told HumAngle. 

Hamza, the climate-friendly environment advocate, urged the government to invest in solar-powered boreholes as a way of promoting clean energy and sustainable water supply across communities facing similar challenges. He also called for stronger conflict-resolution mechanisms across the state.

“Water scarcity is not just an environmental issue but a driver of insecurity, because in a place where there is tension, certain groups can take advantage of the situation to infiltrate such communities and cause problems,” Hamza said. 

Although the state government has collaborated with civil society organisations to adopt measures like afforestation, small-scale irrigation projects, and awareness campaigns, among other initiatives, to address the recurring clashes over water and limited resources. Hamza noted that many communities still lack the technical capacity and financial support to sustain these interventions.

“Some of the measures, like afforestation and proper waste management, are not owned properly by the locals,” Hamza said. 

He further called for integrated water resource management and inclusive governance to protect watersheds and prevent further land degradation. “Degraded lands can be restored through rotation. Herders should not graze on the same spot for more than five years, and farmers should do the same,” he said.

He also stressed the need for interdependence; farmers relying on cow dung as manure, and herders being granted access to reserved grazing areas.

In November 2024, an empty field suddenly turned into a bustling scene. Women streamed in carrying baskets of tomatoes, while others unwrapped sacks of oranges. At the time, teenage girls hawked in the crowd with trays of boiled groundnuts balanced on their heads. Along the roadside, two trailers lined up a few metres away as young men tossed heavy sacks of maize into one and rice into the other.

This was the Tumba Ra Ngabili market.

For a trader like Asmau Abubakar, she never imagined a market like this could exist, especially when she reflects on the years when the Boko Haram insurgency was at its peak. She says her fear grew the first time she heard the insurgents had arrived in Madagali in 2014, a few towns away from Michika, her hometown, both in Adamawa State, northeastern Nigeria.

When rumours spread at the time that the insurgents would not harm women, Asmau urged her husband to flee while she stayed behind with the children. But he refused, insisting the family remain together.

Then came the news that the insurgents were unleashing violence in Gulak. And knowing Gulak was close, Asmau’s family fled to Uba, a neighbouring town, where they passed the night before returning home the next morning.

But the fear never left Asmau. Soon again, word spread that Michika itself would be attacked on a Sunday.

“Before they came, on that Sunday at dawn, my husband got us a car that took us to Yola [the Adamawa State capital] while he fled on foot, passing several villages to reach Gombi,” Asmau recalled. “We were at Mararraban Mubi when I heard the insurgents had entered Michika.”

Many families, like Asmau’s, fled for safety. But that Sunday in September 2014 carried the memory of gunfire echoing in the air, houses burning in flames, and, of course, the lives taken in cold blood. The insurgents did not only stop at attacking Michika, they in fact seized the town and spread into nearby villages, inflicting fear and hardship on the locals. It was a period when they were expanding across northeastern Nigeria in their bid to carve out an Islamic caliphate.

Boko Haram’s violent campaign had started five years earlier in 2009, first as an uprising in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, before spreading across the region. In its wake, families mourned their loved ones, schools and markets were left destroyed, and dozens of communities were turned to ruins, with over a million people uprooted from their homes.

Michika was soon trapped in this same cycle of bloodshed and chaos that forced people across Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe to live with fear as part of daily life. Meanwhile, the insurgents held the town captive for months until January 2015, when Nigeria’s military finally drove them out. So, as locals began to return, they discovered that what awaited them were wrecked houses and the loss of nearly everything they owned.

“The walls of my house were riddled with bullets,” Asmau told HumAngle. “They destroyed doors and windows and looted some of our belongings.”

Even as Asmau and other families in Michika began to rebuild and piece their lives back together, they realised that the insurgency had sown deep distrust between Christians and Muslims. The divide between the two faiths grew so intense that, according to locals HumAngle spoke with, it spread into the main Michika market, where Christians chose Saturdays to sell their farm produce and Muslims traded on Sundays when most Christians were in church.

Asmau has not forgetten that period when she moved between the main Michika market and those in Bazza and Lassa to buy and sell bags of maize, beans, and groundnuts.

“Relations between us Muslims and the Christians became strained,” she explained. “They thought the majority of Muslims were Boko Haram.”

HumAngle also learned that, at the time, Muslims said their children could not have relationships with children from Christian families, and Christians equally insisted their children would not relate to Muslim families.

Rebuilding Trust

This situation persisted in Tumba Ra Ngabili, Asmau’s community, until 2020, when the British Council, in partnership with the Women and Youth Economic Advancement and Health Initiative (WYEAHI), brought women from the area into its Managing Conflict in Nigeria (MCN) programme.

About 200 women from Christian and Muslim households received training in peacebuilding, conflict management, and Early Warning and Early Response (EWER).

“We learned that due to the insurgency, these women lost their livelihoods. So we felt it would be good that after the training, we should also empower them,” said Aishatu Margima, WYEAHI’s Executive Director.

The women were organised into groups of 20, with each member receiving ₦30,000 to start a business or support an existing one.

“I was happy when my name made it to the list of women selected for the training and even more when I got empowered with ₦30,000,” shared Asmau, recalling it was a time when her business was struggling due to low capital and disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, which restricted movements and closed markets.

The micro-funding and training also transformed Christiana Emma’s life. She had lived in Tumba Ra Ngabili for 20 years and fled to Yola only when the insurgency struck. Though she lost her house and belongings, she returned after Michika was liberated because the feeling that it was her home did not leave her.

“We started rebuilding with my husband through the grace of God, and to support him, I was selling tomatoes, bananas, and oranges,” Christiana said. She would travel to Besso and Kirchinga villages in Michika and Madagali to collect goods on loan, sell them, repay the loan, and keep the profit.

“The ₦30,000 I got helped me grow my business. I later built a capital of ₦150,000 that allows me to buy goods upfront without taking loans,” she noted. “Today, the proceeds help me cover my family’s bills, from education to feeding and healthcare.”

Restoring peace through trade

In their 20-member group, 16 were Christians and 4 were Muslims. The training enlightened them on love and peaceful coexistence.

The group began holding weekly meetings every Sunday to strengthen relationships and discuss business challenges. And in one of those meetings, they decided to establish a market in Tumba Ra Ngabili.

The women approached the community chief, Lawan Yakubu, who, after consulting with his council members, approved their request and allocated land a few metres from his house for the market.

They believed the local market would make it easier to run their businesses and improve their earnings without the need to travel to nearby villages or the main Michika market. At the same time, they wanted the market to serve as a space for unity where people from all faiths could trade freely.

At first, the women traded in an open field until the Danish Refugee Council, an international humanitarian organisation, while implementing a different project in the community, learned about the market and decided to support and expand the women’s efforts by constructing a block of 16 roofed tents where traders could display their goods.

In the two years since it opened, the Tumba Ra Ngabili market has transformed both business and relationships in the community, especially with Christian and Muslim women trading side by side.

Blessing John, a widow and member of the group who now sells Gwanjo (second-hand clothes), remembers how isolated she once felt and how difficult it was to keep her business running or get help when challenges came.

“Now, I know I can turn to any member of the group, whether at the market or at home, whether a Christian or a Muslim, and get support,” said the 40-something-year-old mother of eight.

Blessing explained that to make it convenient for everyone, the women agreed that the market would mainly operate on Sundays immediately after morning church services. 

“The market also opens on Wednesdays, but Sunday has become the main trading day,” she told HumAngle.

Traders troop into the market, mostly during the harvest period, to buy bags of food crops ranging from maize, rice, beans, groundnuts, and even tomatoes, which are then transported in big lorries to Mubi, Maiduguri, and other parts of the country.

Each trader at the market pays ₦50 to the local government as tax on every market day.

Saving together

The women have also started an Adashe (savings pool) system. Every Sunday evening, after trading, they gather to repeat sessions on “maintaining peaceful coexistence with one another,” and each member contributes ₦1,000. 

The collected ₦20,000 is kept in a wooden box made by a local carpenter. The box has four keys, each held by a team of four members, and it can only be opened when all group members are present. If a member is sick or unavoidably absent, a representative from her family or relations can stand in to ensure the box can be opened.

After collecting the contributions, any member needing a loan can borrow from the pool and repay it with 10 per cent interest within a month. For example, if a member borrows ₦10,000, she will repay ₦11,000. In the early days of the system, Asmau often borrowed from the pool to strengthen her business capital.

“It helps me make more profit since the capital is much larger when I combine my initial empowerment money with the loaned amount,” Asmau said. From the profit, she buys foodstuffs each market day and contributes to the savings pool.

“I have children and pay their school fees with a part of the profit,” she added.

When no one needs a loan, the wooden box is locked and kept by the group’s treasurer, Manga Musa, who shared that the group also has a social fund, to which each member deposits ₦50 weekly.

“It’s the savings we use in case any of us gets sick. We can then support the person without asking for repayment,” she said.

And by December each year, a week before Christmas, the group gathers to share all the money in the savings pool before taking a break and returning in January for the new year. 

“We buy Christmas food and clothes for our children in December after sharing the earnings,” noted Christiana. “For Muslims, during their festive seasons, if they need to borrow money from the pool, we give it to them.”

The struggle to thrive

However, despite their success stories, some challenges raise questions about how sustainable the women’s efforts are without institutionalised support. 

During the rainy season, the market does not come alive like it does in the dry months. When HumAngle visited on a Wednesday, the tents were empty. And even on Sunday, the main market day, only a few items, such as vegetables, fruits, and small household goods, were on display. There were no food crops. 

Locals told HumAngle that this is because most traders are occupied with farming at this time of the year and do not come to the market as often.

Last year, the community suffered a flood, and most traders whose farmlands were flooded did not harvest many food crops that could be brought to the market.

Still, the poor roads leading to Tumba Ra Ngabili, along with a river that traders from distant villages must cross, also limit the amount of produce that reaches the market.

On the other hand, Blessing admitted that business has slowed in recent months. “People focus more on looking for what to eat than buying clothes,” she explained.

Manga said the women’s savings pool is directly tied to market activity. When sales drop, some members struggle to make their weekly contributions, which sometimes delays their cycle of lending and repayment.

Even with the gaps, Blessing dreams of opening a shop to stock clothes instead of pushing them around in a wheelbarrow. Others hope to see the Tumba Ra Ngabili market upgraded into a standard marketplace with proper shops and storage facilities. 

Together, the women want their savings pool to grow strong enough to sustain members and extend support to other women in the community.

Now, what remains uncertain is whether the peace they have built can withstand the challenges that still surround them.

This story was produced under the HumAngle Foundation’s Advancing Peace and Security through Journalism project, supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

The cold bites harder at night. Nathaniel Bitrus* feels it on his face as the motorcycle roars along the dirt path to Sunawara, a small community in the Toungo area of Adamawa State, North East Nigeria. A chainsaw sits carefully on his lap, and with two other men, he disappears into the forest.

Nathaniel has spent nearly half of his 45 years taking this three-hour trip. It has helped feed his family, but it has also taken lives and stripped the forest bare. Once, he says, the forests were so dense that the sun barely touched the ground at noon. Now, there are clearings everywhere. Loggers like him have carved paths through the vast Gashaka-Gumti National Park, cutting less lucrative trees to reach the prize – rosewood.

The forest is patrolled, Nathaniel says, checkpoints mounted along the main routes. But with a government permit and the usual bribe, he says, a passage can be bought. 

The men prefer the cheaper way, the secret trails that slip past the eyes of rangers and guards, the paths only loggers know. One such road is called Yaro Me Ka Dauko, a Hausa phrase meaning, “Boy, what are you carrying?” It is the road of the daring. Nathaniel takes it again in silence tonight. He does not have a choice.

When farming is no longer enough 

Nathaniel was a farmer first, or at least he tried to be. He grew maize on a small plot outside Toungo, enough to feed his wife and children. But then the seasons turned. The rains came late or did not come at all, and so the harvests shrank.

In 2001, some men from Lagos, South West Nigeria, came asking for people who could supply rosewood. They showed pictures of the trees they wanted. The locals knew exactly where to find them. Nathaniel was in his twenties then, strong enough to swing an axe all night, and the pay was good – ₦1,000 (about $10 then) per tree log. It was enough to buy food, pay school fees, and buy fertilisers and insecticides, he recalls. 

He signed up.

Soon, there were chainsaws, trucks, and high-paying middlemen. They cut faster and worked into the nights.

David Isaac*, another Toungo farmer-turned-logger, tells us he has been at it for 15 years. “I cut trees to feed my family,” he says. “Farming does not pay anymore. This one does.”

In Baruwa, a forest community tucked in the Mambilla Plateau in the Gashaka Local Government Area of neighbouring Taraba State, George Johnson* has been logging for three decades. He first came to Gembu, a cold town on the plateau, to work on people’s farms. But farming paid too little. 

“Things were expensive,” he says. Logging was better. Sometimes he harvests eucalyptus for local farmers. Other times, when dealers call, he travels three hours to Baruwa to log rosewood.

“The work is dangerous,” Nathaniel says.

They spend days deep in the forest, cutting trees. At night, they sleep with one eye open in makeshift tents. Wild animals prowl close. 

“Sometimes people die or get injured,” says David. “Trees fall on people.”

It happened to him once. He lived. Others were not so lucky.

Rosewood is heavy. When a tree falls, the men loop chains around the trunk and drag it out of the forest until it reaches the dirt road, where trucks wait to transport the logs to a depot outside Sunawara. But as more people died, they pooled money for a crane.

“We did not choose this job,” Nathaniel says softly. “We went to school. But there is no work. If I had a choice, I would not do this.”

Road to China

The real money is not in Toungo or Gashaka or the Mambilla Plateau.

It is in the hands of dealers, foreign buyers, and complicit officials who turn forests into fortunes.

When a dealer receives a consignment request, he calls loggers like Nathaniel.

“We have dedicated loggers, the ones we contact anytime there is demand,” says Charles Ekene*, a Gembu-based dealer. The buyers rarely visit, he says. “They communicate over the phone.”

The dealer commissions the loggers, supplies chainsaws and trucks, sets the prices, pays the transporters, and handles all the paperwork.

Loggers like Nathaniel have their own tools and work independently. “We meet with loggers at a place called ‘Kan Cross, where we negotiate prices,” says  Aliyu Muhammad, a 20-year-old Toungo-based motorcyclist. A trip into the forest costs about ₦4,000 ($2.68), he explains. 

Inside the forest, the loggers cut the trees, paint their initials onto the stumps to mark ownership, and drag the trunks to the roadside. From there, trucks carry them to depots beyond Sunawara.

“They pay about ₦20,000 [$13.40] per log,” Nathaniel says. 

The logs are measured with tape, he adds. 

“And since we do not have access to the buyers in Lagos, we accept whatever the dealers pay us,” says David. 

George says he gets ₦40,000 ($26.81) no matter the size of the log. This is where the real profit begins.

“A truck could fetch ₦3 million [about $2,100] or more on a good day,” Charles says.

From Taraba and Adamawa, the trucks head southward. “From Baruwa, we drive to Jalingo,” Hamma Yusuf*, a 38-year-old truck driver, tells us. And from Jalingo, they reach Lagos, passing through Abuja. 

“It is close to the water,” he says vaguely of the final location. “There are a lot of containers there.”

Logs from Sunawara follow a similar path, passing through Yola, the Adamawa State capital, then Abuja. “Other drivers head first to Kano,” David explains. “A few take the hilly roads through Gembu before reaching Baissa in Taraba.”

Hamma has been transporting timber since 2010. It is mostly intrastate – moving logs from Baruwa and Nguroje, another logging hotspot in Taraba, to a major depot in Baissa, a town in the Kurmi Local Government Area. Occasionally, he makes the longer trip to Lagos.

Hamma works under someone else. They handle the paperwork and negotiate with the dealers, he explains. He carries the documents only to present at checkpoints. 

“Most of the money goes to the owner,” he says. 

Like with the loggers, truck owners decide the pay. Hamma says he earns what could sustain him and his family.

A 2022 Arise News investigation confirmed what Hamma and David describe: rosewood from the region pass through Shagamu, Ogun State, before reaching Apapa Port in Lagos, where cargo ships carry it to China. Our GIS analysis corroborates this route.

Between 2014 and 2017, an average of 40 shipping containers – about 5,600 logs, or 2,800 trees – left Nigeria for China every single day, according to the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). In 2016 alone, the EIA reported, more than 1.4 million rosewood logs worth $300 million were smuggled into China, despite the species being listed under Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a classification requiring strict permitting and oversight.

Today, the financial losses remain unquantified. Neither the National Strategy to Combat Wildlife and Forest Crime (2022–2026) nor Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) performance reports estimate how much Nigeria loses annually to timber trafficking. 

In search of clarity, we filed Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to the Federal Ministry of Finance and the NCS, asking for revenue-loss data. Neither agency had responded at press time.

China’s official 2025 import figures are also unavailable. However, Statista reports that in 2023, China imported $17.1 billion worth of wood products, second only to the United States. Meanwhile, the Enhancing Africa’s Transnational Organised Crime (ENACT) 2017 report estimates that Africa loses about $17 billion annually to timber smuggling.

Much of this demand traces back to China’s enduring cultural fascination with rosewood, known as hongmu. Once reserved for emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties, rosewood furniture became a coveted status symbol, admired for its deep hues, durability, and capacity for intricate carving. That appetite lives on. 

But China’s own forests could not sustain this demand. Large scale logging was banned decades ago. The hunger simply shifted elsewhere. First to Southeast Asia, and more recently to Africa, which now supplies the lion’s share. A 2022 Forest Trends report shows that by 2020, 83 per cent of China’s wood imports came from Africa, while shipments from Southeast Asia declined. CITES data adds that over 41 per cent of China’s rosewood log imports from range states – more than 2.2 million cubic meters worth about $1.037 billion – came from Africa. The scale of demand is staggering: Forest Trends noted that between 2000 and 2015, China’s rosewood imports surged by 1,250 per cent, with the value nearly doubling in a single year between 2013 and 2014, reaching $2.6 billion.

Laws exist, only on paper

Nigeria’s laws against illegal logging look formidable on paper. The Endangered Species Act (1985, revised 2016), the Nigerian Customs Act (2023) prohibiting the export of endangered timber, the pending Endangered Species Conservation and Protection Bill (2024), and multiple state laws ban or criminalise rosewood trafficking. Yet in 2022, CITES issued a rare Article XIII intervention, citing “persistent governance failures” and warning of possible trade sanctions if enforcement did not improve.

State-level bans tell the same story of power without teeth. Taraba State outlawed rosewood logging in 2023. Yet, George insists he pays ₦10,000 ($6.70) each to both local and state governments for annual permits. When asked for proof, he claimed he left the permit at home and promised to send a photo later – a promise he never kept.

Our attempts to verify his claim led nowhere. Officials at the Taraba State Ministry of Environment and Climate Change declined to comment. The ministry’s director of planning, research, and statistics, Fidelis Nashuka, told us, “We have a department of forestry which has no more details on this.”

That same year, Adamawa State governor Ahmadu Fintiri announced a tree-felling ban but framed it as a measure against burning trees “in the name of charcoal,” without naming specific species. Loggers say the ban changed nothing. 

“We obtain permits from the local government,” David says. 

A permit used to cost ₦30,000 ($20.11), he adds, but now goes for ₦50,000 ($34). Nathaniel agrees. “Officials could even issue them at ₦70,000 [$47],” he says, “because the business became competitive.”

When asked to produce these permits, none of the loggers could. They claim carrying the documents is risky, so they leave them at home unless heading deep into the forest. HumAngle wrote to the Adamawa State Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources to verify these claims. However, we got no response. 

On paper, Nigeria has the laws to end this trade. In reality, enforcement bends under corruption.

“We pay money at every security check point for us to be allowed to pass,” David claims.

The problem runs far deeper than local bribes. In 2017, the EIA revealed that Nigerian officials retrospectively issued about 4,000 CITES permits for rosewood logs seized in China, allegedly after payments of over a million dollars to senior officials, with the involvement of the Chinese consulate. Former Environment Minister Amina Mohammed reportedly signed the documents in her final days in office before becoming UN Deputy Secretary-General.

And this is not just a West African story. In 2021, a Kenyan court ordered the country’s Revenue Authority to return $13 million worth of confiscated rosewood to alleged traffickers. The timber had been seized at the Port of Mombasa while in transit from Madagascar through Zanzibar to Hong Kong

A 2022 report by the Institute for Security Studies argued that illegal African rosewood trafficking thrives on corruption, weak enforcement, and legal loopholes across Madagascar, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, and Kenya, with China’s demand as the engine driving it all. The report shows how high-level officials, court decisions, and lax port regulations across East and Southern Africa have turned enforcement into theatre, allowing traffickers to sidestep both domestic laws and CITES restrictions.

The Nigeria-Cameroon border tells the same story. Porous and poorly monitored, it serves as both source and smuggling corridor. Once, Nathaniel crossed the border into Cameroon. The locals there, he recalls, are not as deeply involved as those in Nigeria. The trees felled in Cameroon find their way into Nigeria, he explains.

A 2022 investigation traced the journey of logs from the forests of northern Cameroon through Taraba and Adamawa, showing how the wood, cleared to look Nigerian, made its way to export points. Forest Trends’ Illegal Deforestation and Associated Trade database confirms Nigeria’s role as both a major source and transit country.

People were caught along the way, Nathaniel says. “Our people were beaten, locked up. Some died in prison. At one point, we had to run to save our lives. Our equipment was even set on fire after clashes with security officials in Cameroon.”

There is some success. Occasionally, government officials seize illegal timber, arrest a handful of loggers and dealers, or burn trucks on the spot.

In Taraba, officials insist the 2023 logging ban is being enforced. 

“There are mobile courts, attached with a task force, that go round penalising illegal loggers,” says Fidelis. “They are stationed on major roads. Once the task force apprehends timber poachers, the mobile court immediately fines.”

Penalties, however, rarely go beyond fines. “No jail terms at the moment,” Fidelis admits. “We are still working on the law to include that. There have been arrests, almost every day. But I cannot mention the scale of these arrests, as I am not part of the team.”

Yet on our reporting trip, we saw no sign of these mobile courts or task forces. Only the usual immigration, military, and police checkpoints lined the roads.

At the federal level, the Nigeria Customs Service touts large-scale seizures across ports, border posts, and inland commands. Its 2024 performance report claims that from January to June 2024, the agency made 2,442 seizures with a Duty Paid Value of ₦25.5 billion ($17 million), 203 per cent higher than the same period in 2023.

The National Park Service (NPS) also points to progress. In an April interview with HumAngle, Surveyor-General Ibrahim Musa Goni said the NPS was working with agencies like the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency, the NCS, and others to curb trafficking in wildlife species and plants.

At the end of 2023, Goni said, the NPS made 646 arrests across all national parks, with Gashaka-Gumti recording the highest number, a sign of persistent clashes between park rangers and illegal loggers, poachers, and other intruders in the reserve’s forests and buffer zones.

Regionally, Nigeria is working with the African Protected Area Directors (APAD), ECOWAS, and other regional blocs in East and Central Africa, Goni says. “We take our issues to the European Union and other regional bodies. This way, we get to reach the governments of various countries.”

Yet the logging continues.

The human and ecological toll

The scars are everywhere.

“Before, this place was covered with trees,” says Mary, a 45-year-old farmer in Sunawara, pointing to the bare stretch where stumps now stand like broken teeth. We flew a drone over the hills above Toungo. We could see the empty patches where forests once stood like walls.

Gathering firewood has become a daily struggle. “We have to walk a long distance now just to find enough for cooking,” Mary says.

But the loss is deeper than firewood.

“Rosewood belongs to the Fabaceae family,” explains Ridwan Jaafar, an ecosystem ecologist from the Mambilla Plateau and lead strategist for the Nigerian Montane Forest Project. “This group of species fixes atmospheric nitrogen and enriches the soil. When the trees are gone, that function disappears too.”

Farmers feel the loss directly. “It hardly rains anymore,” says Juris Saiwa, a 68-year-old farmer in Sunawara. “Maybe it is because of cutting down trees,” he adds, convinced that history links deforestation with drought.

Yields have shrunk. “We could cultivate even without fertiliser before,” says Jauro, the Sunawara village head. 

Mary agrees: “Now our crops do not grow well. The land does not produce the way it used to.”

Dr Hamman Kamale, a geologist at the University of Maiduguri in Borno State, confirms what the farmers sense. “Deforestation degrades soil fertility. Organic matter declines, soils compact, and land degradation spreads,” he says. HumAngle reported in July that farmers in Taraba complained of dry spells withering their crops.

The damage spirals outward. Ridwan explains that trees play a key role in carbon storage. “Forests act as terrestrial carbon sinks, absorbing carbon dioxide and locking it in biomass and soil,” he says. Remove the trees, and you release carbon while erasing that storage capacity.

The dangers multiply with floods and erosion. “Deforestation removes root reinforcement, increasing landslide risk, accelerates runoff, and triggers gully formation,” says Dr. Kamale. “Sediment loads rise in rivers, channels destabilise, groundwater recharge drops, and water quality declines.” 

In Adamawa, floods now come almost every year, destroying homes and displacing thousands.

The damage extends to wildlife.

“The animals we used to see, such as gorillas and monkeys, are gone,” says Jauro. “We don’t know if they left or died out.” 

Rosewood provides shelter for these animals, ecologist Ridwan says. “They are also a food source as their leaves are rich in nitrogen. Their disappearance means animals and birds migrate.”

Satellite analysis reveals what the farmers, scientists, and ecologists are saying. Our Landsat data analysis (USGS, 2023) shows a dramatic transformation of the Gashaka-Gumti National Park between 2010 and 2023. Bare land expanded by more than 1,800 km² between 2010 and 2015 alone, a fourteen-fold increase in just five years. Farmland and sparse vegetation actually shrank by nearly 80 km² during the same period, proving that this was no slow encroachment by farmers but a rapid, organised logging boom. By 2020, cleared land exceeded 2,050 km². Even after a slight recovery by 2023, dense forest cover stood at just 39.8 km², far below pre-boom levels, leaving the park deeply scarred.

Experts say the solutions must begin where the damage began. “Even some security agents don’t understand the environmental laws,” Ridwan laments. “The government must involve the communities, enlighten them on the risks, and provide sustainable alternatives like beekeeping or shea butter processing. These are more profitable and ecologically sound. But the key is community ownership.”

Dr. Kamale recommends protecting riparian zones and steep headwaters, restricting logging on fragile soils, building erosion control structures like check dams, reforesting degraded slopes with native species, enforcing low-impact harvesting, and strengthening Nigeria–Cameroon cooperation on monitoring.

But money remains the missing piece. NPS boss Goni admits enforcement cannot rely on security agencies alone. “Half the success depends on local communities,” he says. “We have begun training people with new skills and giving starter packs for alternative livelihoods. It has reduced hunting and logging in some areas. But we need more resources to make this sustainable.”

The last ride

It is dawn. Nathaniel and his crew emerge from the forest, three men on a motorcycle, just as they had gone in. 

They will not make this trip again for months, Nathaniel says. The trees are thinning out. The dealers have moved south, to Cross River, where rosewood still grows in abundance. 

“The market is no longer like it used to be,” he tells us. “The people from Lagos don’t come anymore. The foreigners too, we don’t see them like before.”

He sits on the stump of a felled rosewood at the depot outside Sunawara, where he speaks to us.

The air here is damp and cold; fog drifts between the few remaining trees. We can feel the cold, despite putting on jackets. The temperature is below 19°C. A few birds call from somewhere deep inside the remaining trees in the forest, their songs thinner than was described before our trip.

Nathaniel looks towards the forest. He has made this journey hundreds of times, yet each one leaves him with a hollowness he cannot name. The money never lasts. The danger grows each season.

It is hard to picture the world Ridwan, the ecologist, dreams of, a world where bees hum between restored trees, where tourists come to see the wildlife instead of empty clearings. Harder still to imagine a government willing to stop the trade not only with arrests but with real work for men like Nathaniel.

A tricycle moves past, stacked with rosewood planks. It disappears down the road, leaving behind a ribbon of smoke and the smell of fuel hanging in the cold morning air.

*Names with asterisks were changed to protect the sources.

Satellite image analysis and map illustrations were done by Mansir Muhammed. Imagery was sourced from Google Earth Pro and the multi-decade Landsat archive of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), with official park boundaries obtained from the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA).

This story was produced by HumAngle with the support of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.

Auwalu Saidu remembers his elder brother, Babayo, with robes and horses. The kind worn and ridden by royalty in northeastern Nigeria. He remembers him through colours, too. Royal festivities in their hometown of Mubi, Adamawa State, are a spectacle of more colours than the rainbow, but Babayo’s signature colours were white and red. He wore the robe, called babban riga in Hausa, proudly. 

In 2005, he was conferred the title of Barade, which means the royal head of security and commander of horsemen.

Babayo had always been drawn to royalty and had worked with Sarkin Mubi, the King of Mubi, for a long time. As Barade, he led the king’s horse convoys, tied his turban, and fulfilled other royal obligations in the palace. It was his full-time job, and he took pride in it. He basked in the praises his brothers sang of him, known as kirari (praise chant). 

“Even when we did something to him or upset him, we’d do that kirari to diffuse the situation, and he’d laugh and forget about it,” Auwalu recounts.

Babayo also married into royalty. His wife is the daughter of the King of Mokolo, a town in Cameroon. After their wedding, she moved with him to Adamawa, where they lived for about 25 years and had four children together. It has been 11 years since he went missing, and she still waits for him. 

The last time Auwalu saw his brother was on a Wednesday morning in 2014. They were living together and had exchanged greetings before Auwalu left for the market that day. Later, word began to spread that terrorists were on the outskirts of the city, so he sold what he could, put the money together, and quickly came home to tell his family about the rumour. But they were not as alarmed as he was. Auwalu took his wife and children and left for Gela, a nearby community, leaving Babayo, who did not believe the news, and others behind. 

“After I left, I was told that he had been seen on a motorbike with one person in front of him and another behind,” Auwalu tells HumAngle. 

After a few days of not hearing from him, Auwalu started to look for his brother. He searched through the town they fled to, asked around, and tried to contact people who were with Babayo, but there was no luck. He also tried to call his phone, but the cellular network had been disrupted at the time.

Auwalu was then told to go to the highway, where corpses had been discarded and people were searching for their loved ones. He went there conflicted. On one hand, he desperately wanted to find his brother, and the pile of bodies carried a faint, bitterly ironic kind of hope. 

On the other hand, he dreaded the possibility that his brother lay among them. He did not want to see his body cast aside in an open field, nor imagine the state he might find it in. He knew the human body does not last long under the elements before worms and insects claim it, but nothing prepared him for the dreadful, inhumane condition of those corpses. He had seen bodies before, but always in their “fresh” state, when they were washed, shrouded, and prayed over, as is customary in Islamic burial rites. Within a day, the dead were laid to rest with dignity.

Yet as he scanned the lifeless faces in front of him, there was no room for wonder. Under a tree, he saw a body so swollen it looked ready to burst. It was not Babayo. None of the bodies were. But that single, bloated corpse seared itself into his memory and shook him to the core.

“That day I couldn’t eat,” Auwalu recounts. “Even when I was offered food, and it was right there in front of me, I couldn’t eat it. I was in so much shock. It wasn’t until the following day that I started slowly eating.”

As the years went by, Auwalu continued to search for his brother. Two years ago, a driver in his area, who regularly transports drinks between Mubi and Cameroon, claimed to have seen Babayo in Cameroon. Auwalu went there and scouted refugee camps, and asked around, but there was no trace of Babayo anywhere. The person who was “seen” was not him. Auwalu left Cameroon, realising that he had been misinformed about the whereabouts of his brother. 

About four years ago, Auwalu had launched yet another search for his brother when he came into contact with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which had reached out about Babayo through its missing persons programme. He was then enrolled in the ICRC’s Accompaniment Programme, which he says has taught him patience and resilience. 

It has also provided support to his nephews, Babayo’s children, helping them cope with their grief. After his brother went missing and the war subsided, Auwalu took in two of them, Dahiru and Salisu, who have lived with him ever since.

Dahiru remembers his father with schoolbooks and a football. His father always asked about his studies, whether he had revised well, and whether he was keeping up. But the memory that lingers most is the day a fight over a ball led him to be beaten up by friends. His father consoled him and promised to buy him his own. He did, and it became one of the symbols of his father’s care. 

Now 17 years old and in SS2, he wants to be a businessman after graduating from secondary school, so he can earn enough money to take care of his mother and siblings. And while he dreams of the man he will become, he dreams of the return of his father, the man who took care of him so fondly when he was young.

“I feel in my heart that my father will come back,” Dahiru says. “I never think that he’s gone forever. I know that he’ll be back.”

His brother, Salisu, remembers his father with toys. Each time he passes a shop with shelves full of them, he thinks of the days his father would buy him one. At first, the memories came with worry and fear. The mere mention of his father’s name evoked such grief that he would be unable to study or play that day. But with time, he has turned that fear into prayer. And now, when he hears the name, he asks God to bring his father back in good health.

Salisu is 15 years old and in JS2. He is outspoken and full of energy, while Dahiru is more shy and measured in his speech. Like his brother, Salisu wants to become a businessman, so he can support those who have helped him, especially his uncle, Auwalu, who has been there for him in his father’s absence. “I want to make him happy,” Salisu says, “just like he’s made me happy.”

Both boys said the ICRC’s programme has given them tools to navigate their emotions. They have learned patience and obedience towards their caretakers and elders, the importance of upholding their morals, and the need to avoid harmful practices such as substance abuse. The programme also encouraged them to seek out trusted people when they feel overwhelmed, to practise breathing exercises when they are angry, and to retreat to quiet places, such as the shade of a tree, where they can calm their nerves.

The ICRC runs the Protection of Family Links, an initiative that helps families affected by war stay connected and supports them in discovering the fate of missing loved ones. It is under this that the Accompaniment Programme was launched in 2019 to support families of missing persons in the North East, while searches are ongoing. 

The programme runs in six-month cycles, offering psychosocial and economic support, along with regular updates on the search. So far, seven cycles have been completed, with the eighth currently underway. It has reached more than 700 beneficiaries. A dedicated Child Accompaniment Programme has also been introduced, with two cycles completed for 68 children aged 13–17.

Searches are conducted through various methods, including announcing names, active tracing, and photo tracing, which enable wider community involvement in identifying the missing. Through these combined efforts, the Accompaniment Programme continues to address both the emotional and practical challenges faced by families, while keeping the search for their loved ones active and visible.

Whenever Auwalu remembers his brother, worry overcomes him. But then, he says, he remembers his own mortality and surrenders it all to God.

In the years after Babayo’s disappearance, his children often asked where their father was. Auwalu would comfort them and tell them he would return. He has taken on the role of their father, caring for them as though they were his own. He does his best to fill the emptiness of their loss, to give them enough love and guidance that their pain is eased. Over time, Babayo’s sons have spoken of their father less and less. Auwalu hopes the boys will grow into responsible men, able to care for and raise families of their own. Seeing the boys calmer and less weighed down by grief has eased his own pain, too, even if it has not disappeared entirely.

“At one point, whenever something would happen, they would say, ‘If my father were here…’ But now, because we treat them well, they are happy, even as they still remember him and see his photos in our home,” Auwalu says. “If I were to speak to him, I would tell him: If you are still alive, please come back.” 

Auwalu says their mother has suffered greatly since her son’s disappearance. It has been tears and grief all these years, as he was very good to her when he was around. He provided for her and took care of all that concerned her. Since the day he went missing, she has persistently been in distress, and her health has faltered again and again. 

Babayo’s wife, Fatoumata, has waited for him for 11 years now. While some Islamic clerics ruled that she could remarry because of her husband’s prolonged disappearance, she refused. She continued to hope and believe that he would return. She was living in Cameroon with the other children. But recently, she has shown signs of being open to remarrying. Four days ago, she moved back to Mubi to stay with her uncle, who says he will arrange for her to get married.  

As for Auwalu, every time he receives news or follows a lead that ends in yet another disappointment, it chips away at his hope a little more. When he returned from Cameroon, for instance, he felt defeated and consumed by despair, and throughout his journey home, his thoughts were only of Babayo.

He has dreamt of his brother more times than he can count. Once, he dreamt that Babayo returned dressed in white. But in those dreams, he never spoke. And now, as the long years have gone by, even those dreams come to him less often. 

Boko Haram insurgents raided Wagga Mongoro, a rural community in Madagali Local Government Area (LGA), Adamawa State, in northeastern Nigeria, on Tuesday night, Sept. 23. They killed four residents, injured several others, and destroyed property, including a church, homes, and vehicles.

Cyrus Ezra, a resident, told HumAngle that several residents began fleeing when the terrorists invaded the community at about 11:40 p.m. “They killed David Mbicho, his son Daniel, Jude Jacob, and Omega Duda. They burnt churches, motorcycles, houses, and a car,” he said, adding that the local vigilante group tried to repel the attack but was outnumbered and outgunned. 

“The group was heavily armed, and there was no official security presence, so our vigilante group had to abandon the fight,” he explained. “So far, we don’t know the total number of injured persons apart from the deceased.”

Cyrus said security operatives arrived only the following morning, Sept. 24, after fleeing residents had begun returning to assess the damage. 

Residents told HumAngle that security operatives deployed to Madagali LGA are usually stationed in the town centre or in Nimankara, leaving villages like Wagga Mongoro vulnerable. 

This was not the first time the community had been targeted. Barely two months ago, in July, terrorists raided the community, burning houses and forcing residents to flee to Madagali town and other neighbouring communities. They returned weeks after calm was restored. Now, after the latest assault, residents are fleeing once again.

“Right now, people have packed their bags and are leaving for Yola, the Adamawa State capital, and other places to go and stay with their loved ones.  Nobody wants to stay behind to witness this kind of incident again,” Cyrus said. 

According to the UN’s International Organisation for Migration, Boko Haram has displaced over 200,000 persons in Adamawa State so far, most of them from Michika and Madagali LGAs. 

“We are scared,” Cyrus said. “Our greatest need right now is security. Some of us don’t want to leave our homes.”

Under the scorching sun, away from their makeshift tent of thatch, bamboo, and a trampoline sheet used as roofing, Pwanabeshi Job* washes clothes with a three-month-old baby strapped to her back. Her two-year-old son plays nearby, while her eldest fans the burning coal to ensure lunch can be ready. Her husband was out.

Before resorting to life on the streets of Imburu, a community in Numan Local Government Area, Adamawa State, northeastern Nigeria, the family of five lived under a proper roof.

However, by early August, they, like many others in the Numan and Lamurde areas, grew anxious, knowing that from mid-August through September, their houses are usually flooded.

Each year, as the Benue River, one of West Africa’s largest rivers, swells, it pushes into homes and farms across Numan, where it meets with the Gongola River. The rising waters, which carved through the fertile Benue Valley, a region long prized for farming, leave communities across the area, such as Imburu, Hayin Gada, Ngbalang, Lure, and Opalo, quickly submerged. 

Some residents migrate to neighbouring communities, while others, like Pwanabeshi, gather mats, chairs, cooking utensils, clothes, and other essentials to settle on the street. There, on higher ground beyond the reach of the floodwaters, they remain for about two months. For many, this has become a way of life since 2022. 

Cycle of displacement 

Locals told HumAngle that flooding was first recorded on a large scale in Adamawa in 2012, especially in the Benue Valley. For the next decade, no incident of that scale was recorded. But in 2022, another devastating flood displaced more than 130,000 people across 153 communities. Twenty-five lives were lost, and properties were severely damaged. Heavy rains, dam spillover, and river overflow were said to be the causes of the incident.  

Flooding returned the following year. In 2023, unusually heavy seasonal rain combined with the occasional release of water from the Lagdo Dam in Cameroon led to floods that destroyed homes and infrastructure in Fufore, Demsa, Shelleng, and other local government areas.

By August 2024, communities such as Kwakwambe, Lure, and Imburu were again affected by a flood, this time linked to overflow from the Kiri Dam in Shelleng. In Madagali, floods struck due to the upstream flow of water from the Cameroonian highlands. 

Most recently, in July 2025, a violent flood ravaged communities in Yola, the Adamawa State capital, claiming lives and properties. By August, communities around the Benue Valley began to migrate after water levels rose and flooded their homes. 

A study identified the opening of dams, excessive rainfall, rising water levels, and poor drainage, among other factors, as the major drivers of floods in Adamawa State. It also noted that many residents fail to heed early flood warnings.

Lives under water 

On the streets of Imburu, affected residents like Pwanabeshi make do with thatch shelters, each separate but stretched along a street so long that it takes about thirty minutes to walk from one end to the other. They sleep, cook, and carry out domestic chores. With no bathrooms and toilets, they bathe and relieve themselves in nearby bushes, usually before dawn or at night. 

While every household is trying to continue their normal life on the streets, things are tough. The trampoline that covers Pwanabeshi’s shelter leaves gaps, so rain seeps in, soaking the mud floor and chilling the family. “The weather is cold, the mosquito nets we have are not enough, and we are many here, including children,” she said. 

Others face similar struggles. Dati John, a mother of six, keeps a plastic container in the middle of her tent to catch dripping water when it rains.

“I’ve been staying here for over three weeks,” she told HumAngle.

Within this period, Dati said that her children have fallen ill several times, but she could only afford paracetamol until workers from the local primary healthcare centre distributed drugs on Sept. 14. “My basic concern is proper shelter and drugs for our children. If we can get those waterproof tents and mosquito nets, then it’ll go a long way for all of us here,” she said.

According to Dennis Sarka, the community leader of Hayin Gada, about thirty households have been flooded in his community so far. He is unsure of the total number of affected households in Imburu, but he says they are the most affected.

The hardship in these communities goes beyond shelter. The floodwaters have also wiped out the residents’ main source of livelihood—farmlands. Talegopwa John said he lost his entire farm, unable to estimate the hectares submerged or the worth of what was destroyed.

“Some people cultivated large hectares of maize and soya beans, but the flood destroyed everything,” he said. Although the residents were informed about the looming flood months ago, they did not have anywhere else to cultivate their farm, so they clung to hope. 

“That is why I no longer cultivate rice or maize, because the rain washes them away easily. Now, I only farm millet, which can withstand the flood,” said Ramson Mandauna, a retired civil servant and full-term farmer who lives in Imburu. 

The 69-year-old said he didn’t experience flooding as a child living in the community. But over the past four years, he has lost his farmland repeatedly and has been forced to live on the streets each rainy season.

“What we need now is food and how to bring an end to the flooding,” Talegopwa said. 

For children and educators in Imburu, the crisis is not just about lost shelter or farmland; it is also about lost education. September marks the start of a new academic year, but pupils cannot attend classes because Kwakwambe Primary School, located in Hayin Gada within the Benue Valley, is submerged. Locals have nicknamed it the ‘Marine Academy’. 

Each year since 2022, the school, which has a population of about 100 pupils, has been forced to close from mid-August through September, leaving children from Imburu, Hayin Gada, and neighbouring communities at home until the water recedes and classes resume in October. 

Dennis told HumAngle that a non-governmental organisation recently surveyed the area with plans to build another school in a location that is not prone to flooding. “We have provided them with land, and we are expecting work to begin soon,” he said. 

These days, some of the out-of-school children spend their days swimming in the flooded areas.

‘Dredge the Benue River’

Agoso Bamaiyi, an environmental scientist from Adamawa State, says the overflowing of the Benue River through its tributary, the Gongola, is the main driver of flooding in the region. While climate change and global warming contribute to the rising frequency and intensity of floods worldwide, he argues that the Benue’s overflooding remains the central cause in Adamawa.

“The release of huge volumes of water from the Lagdo Dam and the fact that the Benue trough is silted so much that it cannot hold the resultant runoff anymore a major reasons,”  he stated, adding that the situation worsens each year. 

Agoso believes the suffering can be significantly reduced if the Benue is dredged and a reservoir dam is constructed. He said the dam, which could be completed within four to five years, would store excess water released from Lagdo, provide irrigation and electricity, and release water back into the Benue at a natural flow. “If this is done, the flooding caused downstream would be averted,” he said, stressing that dredging would restore the depth and banks of the river, allowing it to carry more water away from farmlands and communities.

“This will also restore year-round navigability and the economic benefits thereof,” he added. 

*Asterisked names have been changed to preserve the identity of the sources.

Abubakar Ibrahim woke one morning in June to find his leg swelling. By nightfall, the entire limb was ballooned and throbbing, leaving the 30-year-old terrified.

“I took some drugs to reduce the swelling, but my legs continued to swell,” said the indigene of Malabu in Adamawa State, northeastern Nigeria.

Within weeks, rashes had turned to sores, and he realised he was facing the same mysterious flesh-eating disease that had already struck his elder brother and neighbours. 

Like many others in Malabu, he assumed the disease was a flesh infection treatable with antibiotics and bandages. He went to the primary healthcare centre in the community, where the sores were cleaned and dressed. He started to recover, describing his situation as mild, compared to others like his brother, who had their flesh falling out. 

While some residents sought help at the primary healthcare centre, others resorted to traditional herbs. Over time, Abubakar noticed the situation worsening across the community. The disease spread faster, and those affected often died within two weeks of their first symptoms. People complained of intense pain, sleepless nights, and a foul odour from the infected wounds.

An outbreak 

HumAngle learnt that the first suspected case of the disease was reported at the Malabu Primary Healthcare Centre (PHC) in 2018, when a man developed swelling in his hand. Within months, rashes formed, then blisters, which turned into sores. His flesh eventually tore away until the bones became visible. He died.

“We never thought it was something that would come to affect some of us,” Abubakar said.

Soon after the man’s death, a few residents began to experience similar symptoms, starting with swelling in either their hands or legs. Many relied on the PHC for wound cleaning and dressing, which offered some relief. But as new cases appeared, conditions deteriorated. 

Residents say that a few people continued to exhibit the symptoms over time, but not in large numbers, until the recent mass outbreak in June this year, and it spread rapidly in the following month. No fewer than 67 persons have contracted the disease since the recent outbreak, according to Alhaji Sajo, a community leader, with eight deaths recorded so far.

Although adult men have been the most affected, residents told HumAngle that children have not been spared, unlike during previous outbreaks. 

“Most of the children that are currently affected are around the age of seven and above,” Abubakar stated. He added that the situation for children is worse. Unlike adults, who mostly get infected in their hands and legs, Abubakar explained that the affected children have sores covering part of their faces that continue to spread and eat into their faces. 

To contain the spread of the disease, the local health authorities identified about 28 critical cases in Malabu and have since transferred eight of the affected persons to the Multi Drug Resistance (MDR) ward at the Modibbo Adama University Teaching Hospital (MAUTH) in Yola, the state capital, while the other 20 declined. 

Residents told HumAngle that histology tests have been conducted by the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). “They said our samples would be taken for testing in laboratories […], according to them, the disease is not cancer,” Abubakar said, adding that Malabu residents have remained restless. “We need to figure out the cause of the disease and how it can be treated.”

Dr. Dahiru Ribadu, the chairperson of the Medical Advisory Committee at MAUTH, said the patients are undergoing treatment under close observation. 

“We are taking care of them the best way we can, and they don’t pay for the drugs or meals because it’s being covered by the local government,” he told HumAngle, adding that even though the disease remains unnamed, admitted patients are responding well to treatment.

Abubakar’s elder brother was among those admitted, but he died days later. While he describes his brother’s case as critical, Abubakar has accepted fate and now tends to his own wounds at home. His greatest concern, he says, is to finally know what this disease is and how it can be stopped.

Non-contagious?

At the hospital, frontline staff are also grappling with uncertainty. Mary Jacob, the nursing officer in charge of the MDR ward at MAUTH, told HumAngle that the patients were brought in on Sept. 4. “There is no diagnosis. We are waiting for the investigation,” she said, noting that the hospital cannot give a proper account of the ailment so far, as it’s a rare one. 

The nurse suggested that the disease might be non-contagious, since many relatives caring for patients remain unaffected. However, she warned that it could spread through open wounds.

“If someone has the disease and there is another person who has a cut on their skin and they touch them, then it can be transmitted through the cut,” she said. Mary noted that one of their biggest challenges at the MDR ward is managing the deep wounds, which require large amounts of bandages and gloves every day.

While the hospital can only manage symptoms, state health officials say they are working with national authorities to uncover the cause. Felix Tangwami, the state Commissioner for Health and Human Services, suggested that the disease might be Buruli ulcer. Tangwami stressed that, while they await official results from the National Reference Laboratory, the state government, in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Health, is taking steps to curb the spread.

Buruli ulcer is a neglected tropical disease caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans, a bacterium from the same family that causes tuberculosis and leprosy. It often begins as painless swelling or nodules on the skin, which later break down into large ulcers that can expose bones and lead to severe disability if untreated. 

The World Health Organisation has documented thousands of cases, mainly in West and Central Africa, with outbreaks reported in countries including Nigeria. 

This wider pattern underscores why health officials in Adamawa are racing to confirm whether the Malabu outbreak is linked to Buruli ulcer. After the first samples were collected, Abubakar said that some NCDC officials returned three days later to take new swabs in Malabu. “They made provisions for some drugs and items for wound dressing at the PHC,” he said. 

In the meantime, residents are left anxious. 

“I want people to know that this disease is not just currently in Malabu alone, even though it started here. At the moment, other communities around Malabu have started recording cases, which means the disease is spreading,” Abubakar added. 

HumAngle reached out to the NCDC for details on the state of its investigation, but is yet to receive a response at the time of filing this report.

Mallam Abakar and his two sons leave their home in Gyawana, Lamurde Local Government Area of Adamawa State, northeastern Nigeria, at 5 a.m. every weekday. Thirty minutes later, they arrive at the farm, and each one of them takes a position.

Five-year-old Isiaka sits at the entrance, guarding a wide bed of ripening rice. His older brother, Abu, stays in the opposite direction. Their father settles near their makeshift shelter, his gaze sweeping across the entire field. 

Isiaka and Abu clutch pieces of zinc and wooden sticks to make a sound. Day after day, the boys repeat this routine, standing guard over their father’s rice field as if it were a battlefield.

By 6 a.m., the team is on high alert. As the father patrols the edges of the field, the boys pound their gongs and shout fiercely, driving away swarms of quelea birds before they can descend.

The quelea species native to sub-Saharan Africa is the most numerous bird species in the world, with a peak post-breeding population estimated at 1.5 billion, according to the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International. Known as the red-billed quelea, this small weaver bird is notorious for its attacks on small-grain crops. It is a major pest throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa and can cause significant economic losses.

Across Nigeria, the recurring quela bird invasion of rice farms remains a great challenge to farmers, especially those in Adamawa, Taraba, Sokoto, Jigawa, and Yobe. The invasion is noted as one of the reasons driving food shortages in these regions, as the dangerous parasites are capable of wiping out hectares in minutes during every invasion.

The family that watches

Mallam Abakar has been cultivating rice for more than a decade. Apart from the recurring flood, farmer-herder clashes, another challenge he faces in the region is quelea bird invasions. 

The first major invasion in Adamawa State was reported in 2016, when the birds swept through 12 council areas, destroying crops worth millions of naira. Since then, the birds have repeatedly unleashed large-scale devastation, pushing rice farmers in the region into crippling losses.

“The birds come every year. In the last few years, we noticed a decline in their invasions, but this year, they are back with full force,” Abakar said. 

HumAngle gathered that the birds usually appear at the end of July and stay until October. As early as 6 a.m., they start hovering above the fields, attempting to descend, prompting farmers to chase them away in an effort to protect their crops. 

The birds are scarcely seen in the afternoon, as they retreat to nearby sugar cane plantations for rest. However, around 5 p.m., they re-emerge in their thousands, and farmers resume their vigilant watch. 

Local farmers say the birds are highly sensitive to sound, often targeting unguarded farms. 

Flying in a swarm of thousands, they descend, settle, and can strip a hectare of rice in minutes. The birds are attracted to mostly rice fields, especially those nearing maturity. They feed by sucking out the milky sap from developing grains or plucking out fully ripened seeds. In addition to feeding damage, their rapid wingbeats shake the plants, causing seedlings and grains to fall to the ground.

To keep them away, the farmers patrol their farms, and since they can’t be everywhere at once, they set up dummies to create the illusion of a human presence. Sometimes they tie strips of leather or plastic across the farms. When the wind blows, the strips flutter and mimic movement, which discourages the birds from descending. Farmers also hit gongs to scare the swarms away or alert neighbouring farms that the birds are on the move. 

Mallam Abakar said he and his children only rest when the birds leave the fields in the afternoon. The family has set up a small tent on the farm, where they take shelter from the scorching sun. There, they pray and share meals before returning to their watch. 

Shaking his head repeatedly, Abakar told HumAngle, “It’s draining. Imagine doing this every day before harvest. We get tired, and sometimes it feels like we should just let them be.”

However, he cannot ignore the birds, as he is a full-time farmer who relies on his farm yields to cater for his family. In a good year, he usually harvests around 20 bags of rice or more. However, in recent times, he has endured repeated tussles with the birds.

“There was a certain year they wiped off my entire rice field,” Abakar recounted. “It was devastating, and since then, I’ve been on guard.”

It was after the birds wiped off his rice fields that he started bringing his children to the farm to assist in scaring the birds away. 

“We don’t wait for them to attack before we start defending,” Abakar said. 

Tiny birds, huge losses 

Bernard Ramson, a 40-year-old rice farmer in the region, who also works as a private security guard, told HumAngle that the quelea bird invasion on his farm left him depressed. He started farming in the region last year and enjoyed a bountiful harvest in April after taking part in irrigation.

“We started sighting the birds around July, and by August, their numbers tripled,” he said. 

For months, Bernard tended to his rice farm, applying pesticides and weeding by hand. With less than a month to harvest, he was counting down until he arrived at his rice field one morning to find it destroyed. The birds had drained the milky sap from the ripening rice, leaving behind husks and wasted seeds. 

“I was expecting over 20 bags of rice, but I ended up with half a bag. I was so disturbed to the extent that I was bedridden for days,” he said. 

Bernard has not returned to the farm since the incident. He said the sight of the farm devastates him, and the loss has even disrupted his work routine, making him unable to cope. 

He attributes the loss to his tight schedule. “Farmers who can’t wait all day hire people to watch their farms 24/7 and scare the birds away, but as a security guard who shuffles between work and farming, I wasn’t always available, so the birds took advantage of my absence and wreaked havoc on my farm,” Bernard said.  

While they also damage guinea corn farms, he said, rice farmers suffer the most severe losses.

“I’ve seen people hitting gongs and walking around their farms. Others spread nets on the farm to trap the birds, but even that is not sufficient because some of them end up escaping from the net,” he said. While he is still grappling with the loss, he intends to resume farming next year, and this time, he said, he’d be prepared. 

HumAngle spoke to some farmers in Garin Overseer, another community battling with the invasions in the Lamurde Local Government of Adamawa State. 

Richard Pwanidi, a 35-year-old who inherited his father’s farmland, has erected a makeshift shelter on the farm. There, he and his brothers take turns warding off the quelea birds in the night. He had lost a significant portion of his rice crop to their invasion. 

Richard said that though all mechanisms were in place to drive the birds away, the invasion had cost him a lot. 

HumAngle observed leather strips tied around his farm, dummies placed in front of each rice bed, and his brothers constantly patrolling the fields, creating the impression of human movement. These strategies are similar to the ones adopted by other farmers in the area. 

“We beat drums, we screamed when we saw them approaching, but it seems they were already used to it, because despite the effort, they flew into my farm, descended, and did their thing,” Richard said.  

He lost three beds of rice to the birds, as did his brother on the same day. 

Richard is currently carrying out an early harvest due to the invasion. Even though his rice crops require a week or more to fully ripen, he said he’d rather harvest them now than lose everything to the birds. 

According to Richard, farmers in the region are tired. “We are not talking about five or ten thousand of them. We are talking about thirty thousand and above, descending at once,” he said. 

‘Overlapping schedules’

After witnessing the devastation, HumAngle consulted Bethel Clement, a conservation biology scholar at the A.P. Leventis Ornithological Research Institute, University of Jos, Plateau State, on why the invasion persists. “The issue continues because farming schedules overlap with Quelea migration. Altering rice production timing to avoid this overlap could drastically reduce damage, though local constraints such as water availability may limit such flexibility,” he said. 

The conservation biologist also said that while chemical spraying is widely used, it harms ecosystems and is unsustainable. He recommended more integrated measures, including synchronised planting and early harvesting, organised community bird-scaring, habitat management to reduce roosting near farms, and encouraging natural predators such as kestrels and owls through nest boxes and perches. These approaches, he said, balance food security with environmental protection and offer farmers long-term resilience.

‘We need help’

In 2020, the sum of  ₦13 billion was approved by the Federal Government to tackle the quelea bird and other pest invasions across 12 affected states in Nigeria, including Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Kebbi, Sokoto, and Taraba. Four years later, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development flagged off the project in Kebbi. However, the affected farmers in Adamawa who spoke to HumAngle said they have yet to benefit from the intervention.

“I’ve been farming rice in this region with my late father since I was a boy, and I’ve never witnessed any aerial spray of chemicals facilitated by the government. We heard that money was approved by the government for aerial spraying, but we’ve not seen it so far,” Richard said. 

He added that the only support they received was from Savannah Sugar, a private company that sprayed chemicals around farms in Gyawana, Garin Overseer, Opalo, and other areas, approximately ten years ago. “[After the company spread the chemical, the birds vanished for like three years before they returned,” Richard added.

HumAngle contacted the office of the Adamawa State Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development for comments on the state government’s planned response to the invasion, if any, but received no reply at press time. 

Richard believes government intervention could prevent further losses. 

“We need help,” the farmer said. 

It is July 18, around 7 a.m., and a group of women carrying malnourished children are gathered at the primary healthcare centre in Adamawa State, northeastern Nigeria, to receive free supplements for their children. While waiting for the weekly distribution to commence, they interact with one another. 

Moments later, a healthcare staff member in a white uniform with a blue check yells from the opposite direction: “There is no RUFT supplement today. Go home and come back next week.”

Disappointed, the women place their babies on their backs and disperse in different directions. 

Twenty-three-year-old Aisha Adamu, a resident of the Ngurore community, where the primary healthcare centre is located, is one of the women who are returning home without the supplements. Aisha relies on the RUFT supplement as a primary meal for her malnourished daughter. 

“She has been suffering from malnutrition since she clocked 1 year. I have seen improvement since I started feeding her the supplement,” Aisha tells HumAngle. She is devastated because she has to look for an alternative meal for her malnourished baby, as the facility is facing a shortage of RUFT supplement. 

Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food, also known as RUFT, is an essential supplement used for treating malnourished children under the age of five. RUFT paste consists of powdered milk, peanuts, butter, vegetable oil, sugar, and a mix of vitamins and minerals. A sachet contains 500 calories and micronutrients. 

The crisis 

In 2023, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that growing inflation, climate change, insecurity, and displacement impacted child malnutrition in Adamawa. That year, about half a million children were treated for acute malnutrition in UNICEF-supported facilities in Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe states. The number reflected a 37 per cent increase from 2022, highlighting how severe malnutrition was endangering children’s survival and development in North East Nigeria.

Ngurore, a community in Yola South, grapples with a severe child malnutrition crisis. The community hosts victims of displacement from the Michika and Madagali Local Government Areas (LGA). The primary healthcare centre in Ngurore offers clinical services to residents, the displaced population, and people from outside the community. 

To address the malnutrition crisis, organisations such as the Helen Keller Foundation, UNICEF, USAID, and MSF are collaborating with primary healthcare facilities, offering free health screenings and providing RUFT supplements to malnourished children.

Ahmed Mshelia, the data clerk at the Ngurore primary healthcare centre and one of the key facilitators of the malnutrition unit, expressed concern over the soaring malnutrition cases in the facility. Ahmed is not sure whether the centre can handle the number of people relying on it for aid. 

“Apart from residents of Ngurore and the IDPS living here, we also have women from Fufore and sometimes Numan LGA coming here to collect free supplements for their malnourished children,” he said. 

The facility attends to malnourished children every Friday. 

“So we have new cases and then revisit cases. The new cases come to register for the first time, while the revisit cases have already been registered, so they turn up weekly for the supplements,” he explained, noting that the facility records an average of five to six new cases weekly, which puts it at 20 to 22 new cases monthly; so far, there are over 50 revisit cases.  “We refer severe cases to bigger hospitals.”

At the centre, the RUFT was distributed according to each child’s weight. If available, the women could go home with at least 14 sachets every Friday. Aisha Abdullahi, a 38-year-old mother, received at least 14 sachets of RUFT supplement each week for her daughter, who is one year and ten months old. Aisha set aside two sachets for each day, ensuring that the 14 sachets would last her daughter for the entire week.

“I feed her with the supplement twice a day, morning and evening, then complement it with any available food,” she told HumAngle. 

In February, Felix Tangwami, Adamawa State’s Commissioner for Health and Human Resources, noted in a report that insecurity accounts for the high malnutrition rates in the state as farmers have limited access to their farms, which, in turn, results in reduced food availability.

Parents of malnourished children in Fufore told HumAngle that inflation is the primary cause of malnutrition in their community, as their husbands can barely afford three meals a day for their households.

Ahmed stated that many women who visit the centre lack sufficient breast milk, a situation he attributed to poor feeding practices, which consequently impacts the health of their children. For Amina Abdullahi, a 35-year-old mother of six from Ngurore, the primary healthcare centre is assisting her 2-year-old twins in overcoming malnutrition. In addition to the twins, she has another son at home who is also malnourished.

Amina registered the three children at the facility in February and has seen improvement in their weight. However, with the shortage in RUFT supply, she’s worried about their recovery process, which seems to be taking too long. According to Ahmed, the RUFT treatment is expected to run for eight weeks nonstop, but right now, it’s impossible to stay on track as parents struggle to keep up due to inconsistent supply. He explained that the women get the RUFT supply for at least four weeks out of the required eight. 

Amina expressed concern over the country’s inflation rate. The ongoing shortage of RUFT supplies leaves her anxious about feeding her malnourished children due to insufficient food at home. 

“Feeding is difficult compared to the past. Everything is now expensive, but we thank God for everything,” she said. 

Less aid

In May, HumAngle reported that the withdrawal of humanitarian agencies dependent on USAID funding in Nigeria affected displaced populations relying on them for essential services. This suspension was said to have deepened the humanitarian crisis in the northeastern region. 

The primary healthcare centre in Ngurore, which previously collaborated with agencies like USAID, is now feeling the impact of their withdrawal as the child malnutrition situation in the region is worsening. 

Ahmed explained that the facility’s aid from civil society groups has significantly dropped this year compared to previous years. For example, the primary healthcare centre, which used to receive hundreds of RUFT cartons from UNICEF, now gets only about 30. 

As a result, the facility now distributes the supplements bi-weekly, unlike in the past when they were shared weekly.

“The supplements are scarce, and it is required that the children keep up with the treatment once they start, but due to a shortage in supply, we sometimes skip a week or two in distribution, which affects their recovery,” Ahmed noted. 

He added that in the past, the organisations the clinic partnered with not only gave RUFT supplements to the malnourished children but also provided complementary drugs. “They give them deworming tablets like albendazole and sometimes malaria tablets and even distribute free test kits.” The situation has changed, as they only get RUFT supplements, and even the supplements are scarce. “We try our best, and if there’s a constant supply of commodities, then we won’t have problems catering for the children.”

Ahmed is worried about the recovery of the children, stressing that since aid is shrinking and RUFT supply has declined, he had advised parents of the malnourished children to augment the supplement with other complementary meals. 

HumAngle spoke with Umeh Chukwuemerie, a medical officer in the department of pediatric surgery from the Moddibo Adama University Teaching Hospital, Yola. He explained that children under the age of five require good food to develop their brain and motor skills.

“The child is growing, so he needs all the nutrients he can get to be fully developed because this is the stage where he is rapidly growing and his brain is still developing,” Umeh said. He stated that once malnutrition sets in, continuous treatment is crucial; otherwise, the affected child will become stunted, more susceptible to other diseases, and may develop poor social skills that might affect their confidence in the long run. 

Trading hope

In 2022, HumAngle reported the abuse and sale of RUFT supplements in Maiduguri, Borno State capital, at the price of ₦150 per sachet. The reports showed how parents went as far as inducing their children with portions to pass watery stool, which makes them shed weight and then qualify them to obtain the supplements that they [parents] end up selling. 

This sale of RUFT supplements, though fueled by poverty, has been termed illegal. 

Amidst the scarcity, HumAngle found that some of the women in Adamawa also end up selling the supplement they get to local traders due to pressing hunger in their households.

In front of an old motor park known as Tashan Njuwa in Numan LGA, *Babagana balanced his wheelbarrow at the Park’s entrance, where he displayed his wares. Among the biscuits, sweeteners, and other items he was selling, there were scattered sachets of RUFT supplements.

When asked for the price, he said, each sachet costs ₦400. According to him, he buys a sachet at the price of ₦300 from his suppliers and then sells it to hungry adults for ₦400, making a profit of ₦100. 

As Babagana explained, these suppliers are women who receive the supplement for their malnourished children from centres specialising in child malnutrition care across the state. However, he revealed that some healthcare workers sometimes bring the supplement to him. 

He has been selling RUFT supplements for over two years now, and while business has boomed in the past because he sold about 30 pieces or more in a week, the suppliers have barely shown up lately. 

“I heard that there is scarcity, and the ones I have will soon finish, but I might get some in the coming week,” he said, stressing that his RUFT customers are mostly older people. “They buy it as a quick meal. Then they mix it with boiling water and take it as pap.” 

However, Umeh insisted that malnourished children require the RUFT supplement the most, and there is no medical explanation for adults taking it. “It is not supposed to be sold commercially. RUFT is sent directly to primary healthcare centres but ends up in the wrong hands sometimes, which is sad,” he said. 

Ahmed added that some of the women in the community gather the supplements and sell them in large quantities while others sell one at a time.  “We hear them whispering amongst themselves sometimes,” he revealed, stating that some women sell half of what they receive weekly at the healthcare centre and use the remaining half to feed the malnourished children.

“When we tried to sensitise them on why they shouldn’t compromise on their children’s health one time, a woman explained that ten sachets fetched her ₦4,000 at ₦400 each, which she used to procure rice, beans, and other groceries that fed the whole family for a couple of days.”

While he’s aware of the food scarcity and inflation in town, Ahmed urges the women to desist from selling supplements, as this hinders the quick recovery of their children, especially at a time when aid is declining. 

While RUFT is currently scarce, organisations like the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations, with support from the government of Norway, are stepping up with alternative supplements like Tom Brown, a locally produced flour mixed with grains to prevent relapse in the malnourished children of the Ngurore community. 

“Distribution will start soon, and we are grateful. However, I fear that they might start selling this one too,” Ahmed said. 

*Alfred Silas just turned 18. 

He has been in commercial farming for five years. Working on people’s farms for daily wages from the age of 13, he prides himself on a recent promotion to farm manager, one that comes with many responsibilities and a higher wage. 

Lately, he wakes up by 6:00 a.m., hangs his hoe on his shoulder, and strolls to the farm while his younger ones prepare for school. 

A resident of Imburu village in Adamawa State, northeastern Nigeria, Alfred is a final-year student at the Government Day Secondary School, Imburu. While his schoolmates all over the country are preparing for the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and the National Examination Council (NECO) that will qualify them for admission into a university, Alfred hasn’t been in school for about a month now. 

He will also stay out of school for months to come because a different path has been paved for him, a path he accepts with honour. 

Unlike many teenagers in his community who abscond from school to engage in farm labour for quick cash, Alfred was pressed into commercial farming by the weight of family responsibility. From the start of every rainy season in June to the harvest period in September, an average of three months, he stays out of school to work in rice fields. 

“I put school on hold during every farming season so that I can work on people’s farms, earn money, and contribute to household expenses, and besides, my younger siblings are relying on me to take care of them,” he told HumAngle with a distant smile.

Alfred believes his parents don’t make enough money, so when they brought the idea of commercial farming five years ago, he jumped at the offer and has since grown into it. He explained that he had been contributing to household expenses from the age of 13, and now that he is older and has assumed the role of a farm manager, his contribution to household expenses has doubled. 

If he weren’t doing this work, Alfred said, he would like to be in school so he could study to become a doctor like he always wanted. 

While his hard work yields fruits to make ends meet, HumAngle observed that the wages are little compared to what he and many children from other rural communities in Adamawa deserve. 

Farming between lessons 

Seventeen-year-old *Philip Pwanidi is also a final-year student at the Government Day Secondary School in Imburu. 

Philip wakes up as early as 4:00 a.m., and then treks for about 30 minutes from home to the outskirts of the community where the farm he labours on is located. 

“I try my best to balance commercial farming with school,” he told HumAngle. 

“The first thing I do when I get there is turn on the generator so that it can power the water pump, then I head back home and dress for school.”

He stays in school for an average of two hours (8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.). The school grants an hour of refreshment break from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., so Philip rushes back to the farm in his uniform. There, he changes into his work clothes and carries on with farm labour. 

HumAngle spoke to another teen who does commercial farming in a neighbouring community called Zangun, a fertile land under the Numan Local Government Area (LGA) where urban dwellers come to set up farms and hire locals to manage and cultivate. Fifteen-year-old *Betty Godwin is a junior student at the Government Secondary School in this community. 

She has just been contracted to work in a rice field alongside some older women. Betty comes to the farm around 7:00 a.m., works for five hours and takes a break at noon. Then she resumes around 1:00 p.m. and finishes by 3:00 p.m. 

Currently, her work involves transplanting rice in a waterlogged field, and payment is made daily, at the end of every working hour. 

More work, less pay 

It’s been a year since Alfred became a farm manager for his contractor, who doesn’t live in Imburu. While he supervises other young workers in cultivating the lands, he also works. 

Alfred explained that he went to work on the contractor’s rice farm at least five times a week last year, from 5:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. 

He didn’t get a dime until after three months. 

“My contractor said he was going to pay me at the end of the harvest season, and I agreed. So the planting season to harvest season took three months, and that was when I got my pay,” he said.

Alfred received the sum of ₦100,000 and a bag of rice as compensation for his three months’ labour of over 10 hours daily.

“We harvested over 100 bags of rice. The farm is big, as you can see,” he said,  pointing at the vast land surrounding him. 

He also added that during the harvest, he stayed on the farm for over three days without bathing. He ate there and had to keep awake because his role also included serving as a farm guard.

The harvest period lasted for three and a half days, after which Alfred went home. Now, he has been contracted for the same job with the same terms. He commenced his 10-hour daily labour in June and will be settled in September. 

Philip and other children who are into commercial farming in Imburu are paid ₦1,000 or ₦1,500 per rice bed. 

“If you’re working on two beds a day, that’s ₦2,000 or ₦3,000,” he said.  

Philip explained that as children, they don’t get the chance to negotiate because their payment is fixed. He stressed that it’s nearly impossible for him and the other kids to work on two or more beds in a day, so they mostly do one bed.

He said it takes an average of five hours to cultivate one bed due to its size, and since he’s farming between lessons, he cultivates a bed daily.  

“Sometimes, I come here around 10:00 a.m. and leave by 4:00 p.m. I take out ₦500 from my daily earnings to buy food, and then I go home with ₦1,000, but it’s not even up to that amount all the time because the work always leaves us fatigued, so we buy pain killers, which cost like ₦200, and then go home with ₦800,” Philip said. 

Philip also stated that it’s quite difficult to work daily. “I get tired, so I skip a day or two,” he said. He shows up an average of four times a week and makes about ₦6,000. If he takes out the ₦500 he spends on feeding daily, he smiles home with ₦4,000 a week. He is proud of his earnings, and he is saving them as pocket money.

For adult commercial farmers, the situation is different. In Imburu, HumAngle gathered that adults are paid an average of ₦3,000 daily despite cultivating the same bed size as the children. 

Children like Philip are worried by the pay gap, but he says he has no choice but to accept what he gets.  

“There are so many of us [children] lining up to do this work, and sometimes, if you don’t show up on time, there’s always someone to take up your place. The contractors don’t negotiate. You take it or leave it,” he said, emphasising how competitive it can be. 

Most of the large-scale farmers who are the contractors come from urban centres like Ngbalang, Numan, and Yola. 

Despite working the same 10 hours as older women on the same rice farm in Zangun, Betty is paid ₦1,000, while the women get triple the amount. For instance, 35-year-old Pwataksino Hakuri, Betty’s co-worker and commercial farmer with four years of experience, told HumAngle that she receives ₦3,500 at the end of every successful day. This shows a disturbing wage gap. 

The Child Rights ACT of 2023, a legislation that protects children and young adults in Nigeria, frowns at the engagement of children in any form of labour that is harmful to their development. While the minimum age for employment is 15 years, it was stated that the work must not interfere with the children’s education.

The ACT also condemns all forms of exploitative labour, as some of the provisions state that no child must be employed as a domestic help outside the home or domestic environment. No child must lift or move anything heavy that might affect their physical health or social development, and no child must be employed in an industrial setting that is not registered as a technical school or similar approved institutions.

While the lack of implementation of the Child Rights Act is a major concern, inflation and poverty, among other reasons, were identified as reasons for the growing child labour and continuous exploitation of children in Nigeria.

HumAngle interviewed Joniel Yannam Gregory, a large-scale farmer in Adamawa State. With a major focus on rice farming, he has grown maize, cotton, guinea corn, sweet potato, and soya beans on a large scale across several local government areas in the last four years. 

Speaking on the exploitation that children face from large-scale farmers, Joniel said, “They are cost-friendly. I mean, children can accept whatever pay that is given to them at the end of the day without complaints.” He also added that children give less trouble to the farmers and demand less welfare, as they are not fed on-site by the contractors like adults.

“Children can also work and agree to receive their pay at a much later date than adults who have bills to pay and will want their payment instantly,” Joniel said. 

Addressing the pay gap, Joniel said it’s mainly due to the absence of a definite payment plan between farm contractors, labourers, and managers.

“However, it is also pertinent to note that, even if there are no definite payment plans, the amount of work done by the labourers and the size of land worked on are strong determinants of how a person is paid, whether he’s a child or not,” he said.

Despite the wage gap, Betty is satisfied with her payment. “I live with my grandmother. She’s old and can’t do anything to generate income, so at the end of every day, I take what I make to her,” she said. But she wants to be in school.

“I want to be a nurse. I don’t like this work. I don’t like missing school, but I have no choice,” she said, emphasising the strain of survival. 

But education is free

At the Government Day Secondary School in Imburu, the school administrators are worried about the declining number of students during every farming season. In an interview with HumAngle, Satina Phineas, the school principal, said the situation is worsening. 

“Before, the students in this community usually skip school during every rainy season, but now that irrigation farming is becoming a trend, they also skip school during the dry season,” she said.

Satina said the hustle for quick cash has caused a lot of children to derail from school despite the government’s provision of free education in the state. 

In  2019, Ahmadu Fintiri, the Governor of Adamawa State, announced free education across all public schools in the state. This has since taken effect. Students across primary and secondary schools only pay a token as a parent-teacher association (PTA) levy. Even WAEC and NECO fees are sorted by the government. 

According to the principal, students pay the sum of ₦640 per term as PTA levy, which amounts to ₦1920 each school year.  “The government has cleared their fees. The teachers are here, but they don’t show up,” she lamented.

She also stressed that some of the students get dressed from home but don’t go to school. They go to the commercial farms, then change into their work clothes when their parents think they are in school. She added that the school sanctions defaulters, but despite continuous efforts, the situation remains the same. 

In Zangun Primary and Secondary School, the classes are scanty. 

Onisimun Myakpado, the assistant head teacher at the primary school, explained that the management went as far as organising a workshop to sensitise parents in the community about the relevance of education. 

“The parents contribute to the absence of children from the school because some of them send the children to go and work on these farms,” he said. 

A fact sheet on Nigeria’s education, developed in 2023 by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), shows how rural and poor children in Nigeria at all levels have below-average school completion rates in comparison to urban and wealthier children, whose completion rate is above average. The report further states that while 90 per cent of children from the wealthiest quintile complete senior secondary education, less than 16 per cent of children from the poorest quintile do so.

“Education is the only thing parents can give their children as a lifetime inheritance,” said Satina. “If these parents don’t support their children to take advantage of the free education scheme, then they are cheating themselves.”

Esther Simon* is a 41-year-old woman from Imburu. Some of her teenage children are into commercial farming. According to her, commercial farming is an option for the children in her household who have no passion for education and don’t do well at school.

“It’s better if they go to the farm and hustle for money since they don’t do well in school,” she told HumAngle.

Esther also has little faith in the educational system and is worried about the unemployment rate in the country. “I know people who drop their certificates and venture into farming because there is no work, so it’s not entirely a bad thing if the children are into commercial farming,” she said.

However, she acknowledged that formal education and commercial farming combined will equip one for a better future.

“It will be great if we have a system here that allows the children to go to school during the day and then do commercial farming in the evening or during weekends,” she added. 

*The asterisked names are pseudonyms we have used to protect the identities of the sources.

Authorities in the Adamawa Region of Cameroon have called for vigilance and better urban planning to avoid future disasters following the death of four persons and the displacement of families after heavy torrential rains and floods.

Local sources told HumAngle that the heavy rainfall in Ngaoundere, the regional capital, and surrounding areas caused significant damage and forced numerous families to leave. “The floods have seriously impacted the usage of several roads in the region, and many of the roads are out of use. Several schools and markets have been closed down, and access to most areas is now impossible without assistance,” a civil society activist in Ngaoundere said.

For several days, the rainfall in Ngaoundere, the region’s main town, led to a rapid rise in water levels from a nearby lake. This surge damaged infrastructure and left residents stranded, as Valeri Norbert Kuela, the prefect of the Vina division in the area, reported.

A civil engineering expert, who examined the ravaged location, stated that the profundity of the damage shows that the way houses are constructed here is not structured. The engineer warned that something has to be done by strictly vetting building plans before approval is given for construction. 

“The large number of houses which easily collapsed without much effort is evidence of the veracity of accusations that have always been levied against Council authorities, that very little real control is carried out before and during the construction of houses in the city,” he said. “I hope these deaths and damage to several houses would teach the council authorities to do their work better.”

Several displaced individuals who spoke with HumAngle revealed that bribing construction verifiers to overlook standard building regulations was harmful to them.

“Where do I start from now at my age? How long would I have to stay in someone else’s uncompleted building with my children and grandchildren? Sometimes, being ‘smart’ can be a sort of stupidity,” one local, an octogenarian, cried out.  “I thought I was smart by bribing council control staff to look the other way while I bent the construction rules. Look at where I find myself today.”