Best intentions to create a green wall to capture millions of tons of carbon while tackling desertification are up against a lack of funding and banditry in Jigawa State, northwestern Nigeria.
In 2017, 45-year-old Jabiru Muhammed could hardly contain his excitement when the village head of Batu in Jigawa State, northwestern Nigeria, announced that their community would work with officials from the National Agency for the Great Green Wall (NAGGW) to plant trees across a large stretch of land in the village.
Muhammed recalled how the village head told residents that the tree-planting exercise would help restore lands damaged by desertification, which has already ravaged more than half of Jigawa State, and protect their crops from the dusty winds blowing in from the Sahara.
“This is a tremendous project,” said Muhammed. “We have lost a lot of land due to desertification and the expansion of the Sahara Desert from the neighboring Niger Republic. Before the project, whenever we farmed in the area, dusty winds carrying sand destroyed our crops. But now, the problem has reduced as the trees provide a buffer against the dusty winds,” he told IPS.
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Once known as one of the most fertile farming regions in northwestern Nigeria, Jigawa State has in recent years been severely affected by desertification. This growing environmental threat is one of Nigeria’s most pressing challenges, especially in the northern region.
Each year, the country loses an estimated 350,000 hectares of land to desert encroachment, one of the highest rates of desertification in the world. The country is estimated to lose about 5.1 billion dollars annually due to the rapid spread of drought and desert conditions, forcing many communities to relocate.
Since 1920, the Sahara Desert has grown by nearly 10 percent, gradually pushing into the Sahel region. In Nigeria, 11 out of 36 states are affected, with sand dunes spreading and degrading lands.
To address this growing threat, the African Union (AU) introduced an ambitious plan. In 2005, then Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo proposed creating a “wall of trees” to stop the desert’s advance. The AU approved the idea two years later, and the initiative became known as the Great Green Wall.
The wall is an 8,000-kilometer-long and 15-kilometer-wide green belt stretching from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east. It passes through 11 African countries: Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sudan.
In Nigeria, the NAGGW is implementing the project across 11 northern states, including Sokoto, Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Kano, Jigawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Yobe, Borno, and Adamawa.
The main goals are to restore degraded land, stop desert expansion, improve soil and water conservation, support farming and livestock production, create green jobs, and help communities adapt to climate change.
By 2030, the Great Green Wall is expected to become the largest living structure on Earth, three times larger than Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. It aims to capture 250 million tonnes of carbon, restore 100 million hectares of degraded land, and create 10 million sustainable jobs across Africa.
Nigeria’s section of the Great Green Wall stretches about 1,500 kilometers. The country’s effort focuses on planting a 15-kilometer-wide belt of drought-resistant trees across the affected northern states.
Some trees at the Green Great Wall project site in Jigawa. Credit: Promise Eze/IPS
For Tela Jubrin, another resident who joined in planting trees in Jigawa, the project was nothing short of a lifesaver. Like many young men in the area, Jubrin had earlier migrated to Lagos in search of work after repeated crop failures caused by dusty winds. But when he heard about the afforestation project, he decided to return home.
“I used to go with my friends to plant the trees, and as a community, I can recall that we planted up to 10,000 trees. If not for this project, people would not even remain in this community. Here, we believe the project is ours, not just the government’s, because we are the biggest beneficiaries,” Jubrin said.
Challenges
While the project has made progress in Jigawa, its implementation has faced serious challenges in other parts of northern Nigeria. In states such as Zamfara, Borno, and Yobe, armed groups and insurgents have forced the abandonment of reforestation sites. Environmental workers and local communities struggle to sustain the project amid constant threats to their safety.
Nigeria has for years battled a complex web of insecurity driven by jihadist groups and armed bandits. In the northeast, Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) continue to attack rural communities, displacing millions and disrupting farming and environmental projects. In the northwest, heavily armed bandits raid villages and kidnap residents for ransom, making large areas unsafe for agricultural or ecological work.
The United Nations Refugee Agency in 2022 warned that shrinking resources and food shortages could spark new waves of conflict and displacement across the Sahel. That warning is now becoming a reality in Nigeria, where violent clashes over land and water are happening as people driven from desert-affected areas move south.
These challenges have slowed the progress of the Great Green Wall, leaving thousands of hectares unplanted and threatening its environmental and economic goals.
From 2015 to 2024, NAGGW said its Restoration and Land Management Program produced over 37 million tree seedlings and reclaimed about 12,000 hectares of degraded land, despite the challenges. However, experts told IPS that this is still far from enough to contribute meaningfully to the 100 million hectare target set for the entire Great Green Wall in Africa by 2030.
Lawan Cheri, Dean of the School of Management Sciences at the Federal Polytechnic, Damaturu, in Yobe State, explained that insecurity forces people to flee project sites, increasing pressure on land and water in safer areas.
“When people move, they put more strain on land and water in the new places they settle. Some even move further north into the Republic of Niger, worsening the refugee crisis,” he said.
Desertification is degrading land in northern Nigeria. Promise Eze/IPS
“When insecurity forces people to move, plantations are left unattended,” Lawal added. “If the trees are not resilient enough, they die off. Some areas marked for new plantations are now inaccessible. When displaced people move, they depend on forests for firewood and shelter, which worsens deforestation.”
In Zamfara State, where bandits control large parts of the countryside, farmer Danjuma Musa said the project has been halted in areas such as Shinkafi, Kaura, and Mafarawhere tree planting was planned.
“Insecurity has scattered everything now,” he said. “Some people even cut down the trees as they flee from terrorists, and there is nothing we can do because we cannot manage the situation effectively.”
Can Hope Come from COP30?
As world leaders prepare to meet in Belém, Brazil, for COP30, many are hoping the conference will focus more on Africa’s climate problems, especially in the Sahel and northern Nigeria. Experts and activists are calling on negotiators to go beyond making promises and ensure that climate funds are used transparently and projects properly managed.
At COP29 in Baku, African leaders demanded urgent financial support to address the region’s worsening climate crises. Although a new goal was set to raise 300 billion dollars each year by 2035, the summit ended without clear plans on how the money would reach or benefit the Sahel.
Nigeria is one of a small number of countries in Africa to submit its 3rd Nationally Determined Contribution to the UNFCCC.
It quotes a study, “Landscape of Climate Finance in Nigeria” (2024), which concluded that climate finance falls well short of estimated needs for both mitigation and adaptation, “which explains why limited progress has been recorded in the implementation of the NDC 2.0.”
“It is imperative that a climate finance framework be developed to match the country’s needs against funding avenues, including strategies to access these,” the report says.
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The report highlights two attempts to redress the imbalance.
- A Naira 50 billion (about USD 33 million) bond issuance to fund critical green projects aimed at mitigating climate change, advancing environmental sustainability, and fostering inclusive economic growth was launched on 16 June 2025.
- Nigeria has also developed a Nigeria Carbon Market Activation Plan (NCMAP), which projects that it aims to raise between USD 736 million and 2.5 billion by 2030.
Bashir Isiya Ahmad, a climate justice and financing advocate in Borno State, says he hopes COP30 will mark a real turning point.
“I cannot say change will definitely happen, but I am hopeful. The conference is being held in the Amazon region, a place known for its vast forests. Brazil’s experience in forestry and biodiversity gives me some confidence that COP30 might inspire real progress in climate financing, forest protection, and conservation,” he added.
Cheri, however, is less optimistic. “I do not expect much from Brazil,” he said. “There will be long speeches and big promises, but very little will actually be done. Then we will wait again for the next COP meeting.”
He admitted that funding gaps remain a major problem in Nigeria but said corruption and poor accountability have caused even greater harm to the Great Green Wall project.
Mismanagement has long hindered Nigeria’s afforestation efforts, with funds meant to address climate change and environmental challenges often diverted or stolen by corrupt government officials.
“Even the little funds we have are not used properly,” Cheri said. “Last year, billions of naira were budgeted for afforestation projects, but reports showed that less than ten percent was used for the Great Green Wall. About 90 percent went to unrelated projects like streetlights. We need to use these resources more carefully and transparently.”
This feature is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.
IPS UN Bureau Report