The current military coalition between Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger can be a springboard for the lagging economic cooperation between the Lake Chad neighbours. 

The only real bond between neighbours Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger used to be the Lake Chad, but even that connection was drying up like the lake until Boko Haram struck. The insurgents’ spread of terror from Nigeria, where they have massively destabilized the Northeast, to the border towns of the country’s Lake Chad neighbours has birthed a long overdue military coalition that is now achieving positive results. The budding success of the integrated African force, though still in early stages, shows the wealth of potential for the quartet of nations, should they also institute stronger economic ties.

Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, and Niger formed the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC or CBLT in French) in 1964 to cooperate on the utilization and sustenance of the basin’s natural resources. Despite the organization’s over 50 years of existence, it has struggled to achieve its set out goals, neither in sustaining the Lake that binds it, nor in strengthening the economic bond between its members. The Lake Chad, which held so much promise, for power and prosperity, is now almost dried up, thanks to unfavourable climatic conditions and poor regional cooperation.

Time to turn the Shrinking Chad

According to the Global Resource Information Database of the United Nations Environment Programme, the Lake Chad shrank as much as 95 percent from about 1963 to 1998. During the 48th Lake Chad Day celebration three years ago, Nigeria’s then Minister of Water Resources, Sarah Ochekpe, stated that the lake had receded from 25,000 km2 in the 60s to less than 2,000km2. For a lake on which more than 50 million people from its four surrounding countries depend for their basic needs, its shrinking is more than an economic loss; it is a humanitarian crises.

Factors including, but not limited to insufficient funding and lack of real commitment of member states—which now includes Central African Republic—has caused much of the amazing potentials of the lake to disappear. In 1998, member states of the Lake Chad Basin Commission adopted a 20-year Strategic Action Plan to restore the lake, but nothing is yet to showcase progress after 17 years. An ambitious plan adopted in Cameroon in 2002, to channel water from the Oubangui River in Central African Republic through a navigable canal of about 150 km to Lake Chad, has also sadly remained a plan.

In the face of encroaching desertification, saving the Lake Chad is crucial for the survival and empowerment of the millions of people dependent on it, and it is possible. The fact that the lake has an underlying water deposit means that can be explored to regain some of its lost weight. The previous plans–proposed, adopted and dumped– must be revisited. As the coalition of neighbours battle to rescue the region from islamic extremists, they should also join forces to turn the tide of Lake Chad. Like the Boko Haram menace, the lake has been treated with official indifference; that has to change. Governments of Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger must stop paying lip service to the grave issues arising bedeviling the lake and undertake measures to rejuvenate the potentials of the lake to better the lives of the their peoples.

Find the Will

The failings of the LCBC to make much out of the abundance of the Lake Chad have been largely blamed on the struggle of member states to meet financial demands due to low economic. Regardless, there has been a lagging will among the countries to even work together. For example, no proper transportation network exists between any of the countries; it is still easier to fly to Europe from Nigeria than to any of Chad, Niger and Cameroon. As in air, so has it been on water and land; Nigeria has a better road network to Ghana than any of the three countries, and this is despite the fact that it shares land borders with the former but is two countries apart from the latter. Rail linkage system has perhaps never been thought of.

Boko haram’s campaign of violence has brought attention to the long neglected border areas of the Lake Chad neighbours. Lack of development in those areas, especially the absence of effective road networks have contributed to the hurdles faced by the security operatives in checking the insurgency. In those borders also lie immense opportunities to create inter country trading hubs that that can transform the region. The economic success of the European Union is much to the connection of their countries by effective transport systems as well as the easing of travel and economic restrictions. A joint effort to develop the border areas will boost the economies of concerned countries and alleviate the crushing poverty that much of the people of those areas suffer. Very importantly too, it will foreclose the channels exploited by terrorist elements to cause havoc in the region.

Raising our stock in trade 

Trade between the Lake Chad neighbours is so minuscule it is virtually inexistent, not even the French connection has resulted in anything tangible between Cameroon, Chad and Niger. Nigeria’s relationship with Cameroon and Chad has been difficult at times; it dragged the oil rich Bakassi Peninsula with the former and once clashed with the latter over the potential oil reserves around Lake Chad. Even for Niger, with which Nigeria has a closer relations (and shares the name origin), trade is more or less informal and unregulated by the governments.

There is a desperate need for effort from all sides to strengthen ties beyond fighting extremists, poverty and underdevelopment are afterall common enemies too. The best tool for fighting these shared plagues on development is regional cooperation in all economic sectors, from import-export relations to free trade zones. The fast paced achievements of working together militarily mirrors the potential of economic partnership between four countries. In an age where the world is rapidly merging into a global village, that goods produced in Nigeria find it hard to sell in Cameroon, or businesses established in Chad encounter neck-breaking bureaucracy to expand is to Niger and travel between four countries not as easy as taking a walk, is nothing short of an anomaly. The Chad basin countries must thus seize this opportunity to turn this momentary military coalition into an enduring regional relationship that crisscrosses all sectors, especially the economy. Prosperity is not given or taken, it is shared.