 Marma Channel & Nguru Lakes
Along the Marma Channel and around the Nguru Lakes many roads, villages, farmlands and grazing areas have been lost to excessive flooding and many more are under threat. The situation has dramatically worsened in the last 3 years. All year round flooding and soil saturation has also brought Typha grass invasion (and with it quelea bird infestation) – of approx 200 km2 of prime fadama land, mainly used for rice and vegetable cultivation – and potash intrusion. Flood recession farming, fishing and herding have all been equally devastated.
In desperation, communities, Local Governments and even Yobe State Government have severally attempted to drain the Nguru Lakes through a link channel (artificially dug) into the Burumgana, bringing small relief but no significant change in flood levels. Emergency flood protective dyking is presently their only defence. While channel clearance work and flow proportioning structures are going ahead upstream, many of these communities may still need support to build and maintain the dykes around their villages and land against the coming rainy season. However, long-term relief can only come from their moral and physical support for these upstream measures which are essential to the control of excess flooding and spread of typha, through effective water level management.
JWL has been working to generate this understanding and support, through a coalition of local stakeholders, and to resolve present and future land and water-use conflicts between the different types of primary resource users as the situation worsens and as it hopefully improves. A key component of this has been multi-stakeholder dialogue, coalition forming and resource use strategy planning.
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