KANO— THE marauding swarms of locusts which have devastated farmlands across West Africa have reached Kano State officials said yesterday.
Since July, dense clouds of the hungry pests have emerged to attack crops in Senegal, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, and experts have warned that they will spread still further and threaten the livelihood of millions of farmers.
Officials said that the first swarms had reached three states in Nigeria after flying over the border from Niger. Pesticide spraying has begun, but agricultural scientists are calling for concerted regional action.
“For the past three days we’ve been witnessing the destruction of crops by swarms of locusts that have invaded farmland in the Kauran Namoda and Shinkafi local government areas,” said Zamfara State spokesman Ibrahim Birnin-Magaji.
“The destruction done by the locusts is enormous, as a lot of farmland has been eaten up, but the state has sent agricultural personnel to spray the remaining areas that are yet to be destroyed,” he told AFP by telephone.
Mustapha Shehu, spokesman for neighbouring Sokoto, said: “For the past six days locusts have been ravaging farmland in the Isa, Sabon Birni, Goronyo and Wurno local governments. A lot of farms have been destroyed in these areas.” The state has leased an aircraft to spray pesticides, but this measure will be futile without a joint effort between Zamfara, Kebbi, Sokoto and the Niger Republic to contain this epidemic,” he warned. Northern Nigeria has a long border with Niger and the Sahel semi-desert. It is home to some 40 million people, many of them small scale farmers or nomads. On Wednesday the head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Jacques Diouf, warned that this year’s locust explosion could be the worst since 1989, which cost 600 million dollars (485 million euros) to contain.
During a visit to Senegal to assess the scale of the problem he lamented that the scourge had not been halted when first spotted in July, and warned that 100 million dollars was immediately needed for eradication measures.
A series of unusually heavy rains in the Sahel last year and in northwest Africa earlier this year created the conditions for a locust explosion, with four generations of the flying insects able to breed in rapid succession.
Black clouds of up to 80 million locusts can infest an area as tight as a square kilometre (0.4 square miles), devouring everything in their path, while experts warn that “hoppers” -- wingless juveniles -- will follow in their wake.
