By: Abdullahi Inuwa
A growing humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding across the Lake Chad Basin, where more than six million people now face a deadly convergence of violence, displacement, and ecological collapse. The long-running insurgency by Boko Haram and its offshoots has become further emboldened as shrinking natural resources and fragile state presence fuel desperation and conflict.
Once a vast freshwater lifeline shared by Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, and Niger, Lake Chad has shrunk by over 90% since the 1960s due to climate change, overuse, and poor water management. With fishing grounds drying up, farmland degrading, and access to clean water vanishing, communities already vulnerable to insurgency are left teetering on the edge.
“Boko Haram is exploiting the desperation,” warns Dr. Amina Lawal, a regional expert on conflict and environment. “They recruit from starving villages, attack relief convoys, and use the environmental crisis as a weapon.”
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), over 3.3 million people have been displaced in the region, many multiple times, with entire communities living in overcrowded IDP camps or remote bushland without access to food, water, or medical aid.
“Every day, people are forced to choose between hunger and danger,” says Jean-Michel Grand, director of Action Against Hunger. “Farming communities can’t plant, fishers can’t fish, and traders are scared to travel. This isn’t just a humanitarian crisis — it’s a collapse of livelihoods.”
The Nigerian military and a regional joint task force have intensified operations to secure border communities, but experts say the security presence remains patchy. Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) continue to control swathes of rural territory, attacking villages, kidnapping aid workers, and planting mines along trade routes.
For women and children, the situation is especially dire. Girls are being abducted for forced marriage or recruitment, while boys are pressed into armed service. Access to schools and health care is nearly nonexistent in the hardest-hit areas.
Efforts by governments and humanitarian agencies are ongoing, but they are increasingly strained. Officials warn that unless urgent action is taken to stabilize security and reverse environmental degradation, the region could spiral even further out of control.
In response, the African Union and Lake Chad Basin Commission are urging renewed international support for a “climate-security-humanitarian nexus” approach — combining military stabilization with reforestation, irrigation projects, and community-based peacebuilding.
“The Lake Chad Basin is a litmus test for how the world responds to the intersection of climate change and armed conflict,” says AU Peace and Security Commissioner Bankole Adeoye. “Failure is not an option. Millions of lives are at stake.”
As the sun sets over what remains of Lake Chad’s once-vibrant shores, those who remain are clinging to survival — caught between armed terror and an environment no longer able to sustain them.
@AJEnglish
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