Drowning: When the water drinks the person or animal –Mokokoma Mokhonoana
According to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) this year’s flood disaster has ravaged 33 states out of the 36 states and Federal Capital Territory of the Federation. Data from the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development put the number of deaths at 612 persons, the number of injured is 2,776 while persons displaced stood at 1.4 million with 90,000 and 70,566 homes and hectares of land respectively destroyed. However, in line with long held tradition, the Nation conveniently forgets that livestock and wildlife also drown in flood. The livestock industry suffers setbacks at every level of its value chain every time a disaster strikes. Livestock is too precious to our society to be treated with such benign neglect..
Flood has destroyed vast arable and rangeland that constitute our largest ecosystem that supports rural livelihood system which guarantees food security of hundreds of millions of livestock farmers and rural families who provide livestock derived foods (meat, dairy, eggs) not only for themselves but also for millions of others. Ruminants convert often sparse and short-lived vegetation, crop residue and other non-edible biomass generated in the production of crops and tubers for human diet into high-quality food for the populace, contributing to National nutrition and food security. To many in the rural population, this may be the only regularly available source of variety of essential nutrients necessary for healthy growth of children, the nutritional needs of pregnant and lactating mothers, sick and the old. In the current flood, thousands of poultry, pigs, small ruminants, cows, and wildlife drowned. In addition, ranches, kraals, stored feeds and sown pasture were destroyed. The flood also caused many animal health challenges through the circulation of dangerous pathogens that made many animals that survived the flood’s initial surge become sick, dehydrated, suffer from food shortages and starve to death.
Majority of small scale farmers practice mixed farming, so the additional roles played by livestock in rural livelihood system include being the inflation free safe money-boxes (piggy banks). Livestock is one of the most popular private assets owned by women and a good tool for gender mainstreaming. Small livestock are fungible assets that can be liquidated easily on markets days and are commonly referred to as ATMs that neither require BVN nor power network to convert to cash. This efficient unique banking system that survived the currency redesign of 1984 unscratched has suffered fatal bank run due to flood and needs urgent life line support. Therefore, unless livestock-owning flood victims are assisted, the loss of livestock would lead households into abject poverty that would take a long time to overcome. This is because rebuilding livestock asset base, unlike annual cropping, takes time. Unfortunately this extremely serious livelihood situation is less understood and does not appear to be part of the on-going conversation on necessary and immediate assistances and compensations to flood victims.
In general livestock sector is facing several challenges of production, animal heath, marketing, conflicts arising from natural resources utilization and climate changes that requires well thought actions. In addition the sector also suffers from serious bad public relations caused by social media inundated with venomous comments because of the criminal activities of some bad elements amongst livestock producers. Government is now promoting ranching as panacea for these challenges. Unfortunately, the destruction of ranches is casting doubt on the suitability of this technology at least in some states of the Federation. This is because many mobile pastoral producers ran to higher grounds with their stock to avoid flood. A strategy currently unavailable to many ranchers because of lack of early warning system and designated high grounds to move animals to. The timeliness, volume and mode of assistance Government renders to these early adoptees of modern ranching may determine the future of ranching in Nigeria.
In disaster management situation of course, Government’s priority is to provide assistance and aid to humans first. The country’s National Contingency Plan (2019-2021) was developed from this perspectives. It’s objective is to provide basis for coordination of humanitarian response in the event of catastrophic/major disaster and unfortunately does not capture the peculiar needs of livestock. From livestock perspective, emergency intervention aims to restore livelihood through the provision of rapid assistance to quickly rebuild the livestock assets base. The intervention should start with provision of feeds, clean water and medicaments before it moves to rebuilding infrastructure and restocking.
The National Contingency Plan (2019-2021) in its current form is deficient and cannot cater for the livestock sector that supports the livelihood of millions of Nigerians. The Plan needs to urgently incorporate the lessons learnt from this current flood situation and that of 2012 and develop a more systematic Strategy for Livestock Emergency Interventions with a robust livestock focused Early Warning and Response System.
Dr Maina, a former Director of Federal Department of Livestock, can be reached at junaidumaina@gmail.com
