EAST AFRICA LOCUSTS INVASION: PRESIDENT BUHARI NEEDS TO BE ON ALERT

I want to appeal to President Buhari and other West African leaders to be on alert following locusts’ invasion in the East Africa countries. This is after the locusts have invaded several countries in the Eastern African region, among them Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia with the possibility of spreading further. Though they have not yet crossed into West Africa, but I doubt if Nigeria and other countries are in a position to tackle the threat. The number of locusts may grow by five times by June,

I am appealing to President Buhari and partners in the West Africa region that one of the most effective ways to avoid the devastating effects of locust plagues is to prevent them from occurring in the first place. Under this method, considerable resources are allocated to early warning and preventive control strategies whereby locust monitoring stations collect data on weather, ecological conditions and locust numbers, making forecasts of the timing and location of breeding.

I am appealing to President Buhari and partners in the West Africa region to start aerial and ground spraying to prevent the Desert Locust threat in the region. This comes after the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization warned that locust invasion is making the bad food security situation in the Africa sub-region worse.

The Federal Government under President Buhari must take steps to encourage West African states to pay more attention to the current invasion of desert locust which is significantly larger in magnitude and scale than previously experienced in Kenya and across East Africa. The Horn of Africa has been hit by the worst invasion of desert locusts in 25 years, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said recently. West Africa will be affected if urgent action is not taken. Destroying hundreds of thousands of acres of crops, the outbreak is impacting the region’s food insecurity. The UN agency urged for a collective campaign to deal with the crisis, concerned over the risk that the swarms spill over into more countries in East Africa, “if efforts to deal with the voracious pest are not scaled up across the region”.  Moreover, unusual climate conditions have favoured rapid locust reproduction. The agency stressed that as favourable breeding conditions continue, the increase in locust swarms could last until June. And left unchecked, the numbers of crop-devouring insects could grow 500 fold by then. The destruction done by the locusts was enormous some years back, as a lot of farmland has been eaten up. The swarms may reach Nigeria and other parts of West Africa as the UN made an urgent appeal to help contain them.

President Buhari and Key facts about Locusts

•    Locusts are the oldest migratory pest in the world. They differ from ordinary grasshoppers in their ability to gregarize, or change behaviour, and form swarms that can migrate over large distances.

•    The most devastating of all locust species is the Desert Locust. During plagues, it can easily affect 20 percent of the Earth’s land, more than 65 of the world’s poorest countries, and potentially damage the livelihood of one tenth of the world’s population.

The invasion poses an unprecedented threat to food security in the entire Africa region, where over 19 million people in East Africa are already experiencing a high degree of food insecurity, the UN agency said. In Kenya, it is the worst invasion in 70 years, and the government is spending to manage the swarms of locust and prevent spreading.

Invasions of desert locusts are irregular in the region, the last instance occurred in 2007 at a much smaller scale. Irregular weather and climate conditions in 2019, including heavy rains between October and December, are suspected to have contributed to the spread of locusts in the region. “Under a worst-case scenario,” the invasion could become a plague if it is not contained quickly, the FAO said in a statement. Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia are dealing with desert locust swarms of “unprecedented size and destructive potential” that could spill over into more countries in East Africa, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned.

Unheeded warning in the past

The locusts wreaked havoc in the past in neighbouring Sokoto state. For days locusts were ravaging farmland in the Isa, Sabon Birni, Goronyo and Wurno local government [areas]. A lot of farms were destroyed.

Mauritania remains the worst affected country in the past, with officials saying that up to 80% of the harvest has been eaten and one million people could need food aid.

After visiting, FAO director Jacques Diouf in the past regretted that earlier warnings from his agency had gone unheeded. Locusts have also landed in vast numbers in Chad, Mali, Niger and Senegal. There are also fears that they could spread into Sudan’s troubled Darfur region, where tens of thousands are at risk from war, disease and hunger. If the vegetation dries up due to a lack of rain, he says, they will then move in search of food across the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia. Major foods such as cassava and millet are being damaged, as are cash crops vital for export earnings.

Locusts can eat their own weight in food every day, which means a single swarm can consume as much food as several thousand people. The eventual extent of the damage depends largely on the weather. The more it rains, the more the locusts will breed as they travel.

The outbreak of desert locusts, considered the most dangerous locust species, has also affected parts of Somalia and Ethiopia, the likes of  which have not been seen on this scale in 25 years. South Sudan and Uganda are not currently affected, but are at risk, FAO added.

Swarms potentially containing hundreds of millions of individual desert locusts can move 150 kilometres a day – devastating rural livelihoods. According to the UN agency, “given the scale of the current swarms, aerial control is the only effective means to reduce the locust numbers”.

The UN is seeking $70 million to urgently support both pest control and livelihood protection operations in the three most affected countries. The locusts have already devastated large swaths of food and pasture in the region, but the extent of the damage cannot yet be determined since new swarms are spreading across borders. The FAO estimates an increase in locust swarms will continue until June, leading the agency to put in place a six month emergency action plan and suggest it will take USD $70m to contain the swarms across the region.

The desert locust is the most destructive of all food-eating locust species because of its speed and ability to multiply rapidly. Desert locusts swarms can stay in the air for very long periods of time, traveling up 130 kilometers (80 miles) or more a day, the FAO said. A swarm can vary from one square kilometer to several hundred square kilometers with up to 80 million adult locusts in each square kilometer of a swarm.