Mr. Chikaodili popularly known as Papa Ejima among the Bmuko community inhabitants of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT-Abuja) has narrated how he lost his beans farm to the impact of climate change.
Papa Ejima who spoke to MAWA-Foundation on his farm, said the sudden stop of rainfall, stunted the growth of the beans he cultivated in large quantities forcing them to dry up and making him lose his income and investments. This is even as he pointed out that beans need rain to produce and could not go further as soon as the weather changed and the rain stopped.
Papa Ejima whose farm is located in the Zone H Waterside area of Bmuko told MAWA that farmers in the area began noticing a change in weather in the last five years. A development he said is adversely affecting many farmers in the area with many of them attributing it to the handiwork of witches and wizards targeting at destroying their farms by the enemies.
“There are many farmers in this community who do not have the knowledge of climate change, they often attribute the sudden stoppage of rainfall and weather change to the handwork of witches and wizards targeted at them,” Papa Ejima said.
He, however, told MAWA that he had hoped that money that will be realized from harvesting his beans will be used in paying his children’s school fees while lamenting that did not happen again.
“As we speak, two of my kids, one in secondary school and the other in primary school are at home, I cannot pay their fees, I relied on this farm to do that but unfortunately rain stopped and my beans farm was badly affected.
He added that if the government does not rise to the challenge, climate change is likely to lead to an unimaginable food crisis.
Climate change has contributed significantly to weather change leading to scarcity of rainfall, putting local farmers at a huge disadvantage position forcing them to bear the huge consequence.
Worse still, even as climate change continues to impact rural farmers, forcing them to lose their farms and income, a huge number of them do not have knowledge of adaptation and mitigation.
A core reason we are appealing to the Nigerian government, development partners, and environmental specialists to invest more in climate change awareness.