Abuja — At least fifty million Nigerians in eleven states have their livelihoods threatened by desertification.

Practically the whole of the northernmost belt of Nigeria is displaying less and less variety of plant life and rapidly declining wildlife populations.

In North East Nigeria, the Lake Chad has shrunk in volume and spatial coverage, killing off the ambitious South Chad Irrigation Project, while the Sabke Dam in Jibiya, Katsina States is under threat.

Low rainfall, high temperatures and intense wind action have resulted in increasingly unstable top soil, which reduces the agricultural value of the land, whether for crop cultivation or animal husbandry.

Periodic drought in 1943-45, 1971 - 1973, 1983 and the early part of this decade wiped out entire livestock herds and entire crop failures. This resulted in a famine in (2) Niger Republic our Francophone Northern neighbour. By now most Nigerians are aware that the recurrent presence of economic refugees begging for alms in major cities from Niger, Mali and Chad are fundamentally caused by the ravaging effects on human habitation in their home countries. Empirical evidence indicates that the Sahara is advancing southwards at the rate of six hundred meters per annum. Similarly global temperatures are the highest this year since the climatic record keeping began in the early twentieth century.

Periodic movement from dry to wetter areas is not a solution, hence the need for creative scientific solutions.

The Yar'Adua administration realizes the threat desertification poses to livelihood through land degradation and the attendant loss of food security.

Consequently the administration will review and re-invigorate existing desertification mitigation measures.

The National Shelterbelt Programme and various relevant resolutions of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification will soon acquire a new lease of life.

The Minister in charge of Environment, Housing and Urban Development Halima Tayo Alao is an architect; she realizes the serious threat desertification together with drought and deforestation pose to productivity and national prosperity.

The ministry under her leadership is doing everything possible to ensure the Green Wall Sahara Programme, a continental initiative from Mauritania to Djibouti with Nigeria having 1500kms to handle from Kebbi (West) to Borno States East) (4) is a national and

International reference point in desert control for other arid zones in the world. '

What the ministry and indeed all Nigerians need now is" a return to the understanding that planting a tree anywhere in the frontline states is a service to humanity (more oxygen emission).Furthermore each piece of vegetation is a link in checking the onslaught of the hot dry sand of the Sahara.

Abayomi Adeniji, Special Assistant-Media to Minister of Environment, Housing and Urban Development