Northern Nigeria’s worsening loss of vegetation is increasingly becoming more than an environmental problem, threatening agricultural productivity, rural livelihoods, biodiversity and the resilience of communities already exposed to drought and climate variability.
Against this backdrop, the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) is pushing a community-led campaign that combines tree planting, digital monitoring and public mobilisation to help restore degraded landscapes and strengthen environmental protection across the region.
The initiative is coming at a time when official data indicate that a substantial portion of Nigeria’s land is already affected by degradation.
The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) estimates that 21.07 million hectares of Nigeria’s land was degraded in 2019, equivalent to 23.41% of the country’s total land area.
The National Agency for the Great Green Wall (NAGGW) says about 43% of Nigeria’s landmass is threatened by desertification, while approximately 2,168 square kilometres of farmland and rangeland are lost annually. It estimates that the environmental challenge threatens the livelihoods of more than 40 million people, particularly in northern Nigeria.
For northern Nigeria, where farming and livestock production remain central to household incomes and food supply, continued vegetation loss could deepen pressure on already fragile agricultural systems.
The implications extend from the farm to the wider economy. Loss of trees exposes soils to wind and water erosion, reduces soil fertility, diminishes biodiversity and can accelerate the deterioration of grazing areas. As productive land becomes increasingly degraded, farmers and pastoralists face greater competition over fewer viable resources.
This could also worsen rural poverty and contribute to migration as communities search for more productive land and alternative livelihoods.
Decades of environmental pressure
Northern Nigeria’s deforestation problem has developed over decades, driven by a combination of population growth, agricultural expansion, fuelwood collection, charcoal production, overgrazing, urban expansion and unsustainable land-use practices.
The region’s ecological transition from the wetter savanna in parts of the Middle Belt towards the drier Sudan and Sahel zones makes it particularly vulnerable to vegetation loss.
Trees that once provided wind protection, shade, fodder, fuelwood and other ecosystem services have increasingly been removed to create farmland or meet household energy needs.
A study examining land-cover changes in northern Nigeria and the Lake Chad region found that 45,945 square kilometres of vegetation cover were lost between 1984 and 2016.
The study recorded vegetation decline of 2.18 percent annually between 1984 and 2000 and 2.02 percent between 2000 and 2016. Large-scale vegetation losses were recorded across parts of the north-west and north-east, including the Lake Chad area.
The figures illustrate how the environmental transformation of northern Nigeria has evolved from isolated localised degradation into a broader regional challenge.
The loss of vegetation also interacts with climate change. As temperatures rise and rainfall becomes increasingly variable, degraded landscapes have less capacity to retain moisture and recover from drought.
This creates a cycle in which environmental degradation makes communities more vulnerable to climate shocks, while climate stress can further accelerate the degradation of land.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has identified agricultural expansion, fuelwood extraction, unsustainable land management and infrastructure development among the pressures contributing to forest degradation in Nigeria.
The economic cost of a disappearing green cover
The consequences are particularly significant for agriculture.
Northern Nigeria is one of the country’s most important food-producing regions, supplying substantial quantities of grains, livestock, onions, tomatoes and other agricultural commodities.
But agricultural production depends heavily on the health of the land.
Vegetation helps protect topsoil, reduces wind erosion and supports moisture retention. Trees and shrubs also provide fodder and shade for livestock, while agroforestry can allow farmers to combine tree production with food crops.
The destruction of vegetation therefore threatens not just forests but the productivity of farms and the incomes of households that depend on them.
The problem has prompted several large-scale restoration programmes.
The Federal Government’s Great Green Wall programme is focused on the 11 northern frontline states of Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Yobe and Zamfara.
NAGGW says the Nigerian component of the initiative is designed to combat land degradation, drought and desertification while improving livelihoods and building the resilience of communities affected by climate change.
The agency was established by an Act of Parliament in 2015, following Nigeria’s involvement in the African Union-backed Great Green Wall initiative.
The Nigerian programme covers an approximately 1,500-kilometre stretch across the frontline states, with interventions including shelterbelts, woodlots, orchards, agroforestry and restoration of degraded land.
The scale of the challenge, however, means that government interventions alone may not be sufficient.
Restoration efforts gather pace
The National Agency for the Great Green Wall reported that between 2013 and 2024 it raised more than 45.25 million tree seedlings through its community and central nurseries.
During the period, it reported establishing 1,819.96 kilometres of shelterbelts covering 5,459.88 hectares across the 11 frontline states, alongside 1,457.2 hectares of woodlots and 1,047 hectares of orchards.
The broader Great Green Wall initiative aims to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land across Africa by 2030, sequester 250 million tonnes of carbon and create 10 million green jobs.
In Nigeria, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification reports that the Great Green Wall programme has produced 7.6 million plants and seedlings, created 2,801 hectares of reforested land and established 709 kilometres of windbreaks, alongside livelihood and training interventions.
Other restoration programmes are also operating across the region.
The Agro-Climatic Resilience in Semi-Arid Landscapes (ACReSAL) project estimates that between 20 and 30 percent of northern Nigeria’s landmass has been degraded by desertification, deforestation and climate-related factors.
It has set a target of restoring one million hectares of degraded land by 2030 through tree planting, shelterbelts and agroforestry.
FAO, working with ACReSAL, is also supporting the restoration of 350,000 hectares of degraded agro-sylvo-pastoral land across 20 dryland States.
Between 2016 and 2020, FAO-led interventions in Bauchi, Jigawa and Sokoto restored 4,266 hectares of degraded land and benefited about 22,000 people in 35 villages. The programme also incorporated community training and digital monitoring systems.
CITAD bets on technology and community ownership
It is within this wider restoration landscape that CITAD is introducing its latest campaign.
Ya’u, executive director of CITAD, said digital tools would be used to support data collection, evaluation and monitoring of the intervention.
The emphasis on digital monitoring is significant because the success of tree-planting programmes cannot be determined simply by counting seedlings distributed or planted.
A tree that dies shortly after planting does little to restore forest cover.
Monitoring can therefore provide information on where trees have been planted, their survival, the condition of restored areas and the extent to which communities are maintaining them.
Ya’u said media platforms would be deployed to raise awareness and mobilise communities around tree planting, environmental protection, biodiversity conservation and climate resilience.
He called on governments, traditional institutions, development partners, civil society organisations, schools, youth groups and communities to support the initiative.
More importantly, Ya’u urged communities to take ownership of the campaign by protecting and nurturing trees planted in their areas.
That emphasis could prove critical
Previous environmental campaigns across the region have demonstrated that planting trees is only the first stage of restoration. Long-term survival requires protection from grazing, fire, indiscriminate cutting and other pressures.
For communities, however, conservation is more likely to succeed where environmental protection produces tangible economic benefits.
This is why restoration programmes increasingly combine tree planting with agroforestry, livestock production, fruit trees, water infrastructure and other livelihood activities.
NAGGW itself describes its interventions as community-driven, linking land rehabilitation and natural-resource conservation with poverty reduction, food security, employment and livelihood enhancement.
From environmental campaign to economic resilience
For CITAD, the challenge therefore goes beyond increasing the number of trees across northern Nigeria.
It is about changing how communities interact with their environment.
If properly implemented, a community-owned restoration programme could provide benefits ranging from improved soil protection and biodiversity conservation to additional sources of food, fodder and household income.
It could also strengthen the resilience of farmers and pastoralists to climate shocks.
The stakes are high because environmental degradation increasingly intersects with other challenges facing northern Nigeria, including food insecurity, poverty, rural unemployment and competition over land and natural resources.
The Federal Government has itself linked land degradation and desertification with food security, livelihoods, water resources, migration and national stability.
This makes restoration an economic and social policy issue, rather than merely an environmental one.
The challenge for CITAD and other organisations involved in the campaign will be ensuring that enthusiasm around tree planting translates into trees that survive and landscapes that recover.
Effective monitoring, adequate funding, community participation and protection of restored areas will determine whether the intervention produces lasting results.
Ya’u said sustained community participation, effective monitoring and collective responsibility would be crucial to the success of the campaign.
The initiative, he added, forms part of CITAD’s broader effort to promote community-led solutions to environmental challenges and build a greener and more resilient northern Nigeria.
For a region that has spent decades watching its vegetation recede, the measure of success may ultimately be whether communities can once again depend on trees not simply as environmental assets, but as a foundation for productive farms, healthier ecosystems and more resilient rural economies.
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