₦2.8tr Needed To Revive Lake Chad — Buhari

President Muhammadu Buhari

President Muhammadu Buhari said over US$14 billion (₦2.789trillion) is needed to revive the Lake Chad to help check the exodus of African youths to Europe for greener pastures. He said at least five million people from Central African Republic to the Lake Chad Basin countries (Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Benin), who risk their lives crossing the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean to Europe for greener pastures,  will be rehabilitated.

Daily Trust report continues:

Buhari said this yesterday while addressing a high level meeting on “climate change challenges and solutions in Africa,” on the sidelines of the on-going UN climate change conference in Paris.

The lake, which covered an area of approximately 22,000 square kilometres in the 1970s, has shrunk within a few years to 2,500 square kilometres.

“The amount of resources required and the high technological expertise and infrastructure needed to be undertaken to revive the Lake Chad has to be mainly financed by the G7 and the United States. The cost is great and more than US$14 billion is needed to revive the lake,” he said.

He said no fewer than five million people living in the Lake Chad Basin countries had been displaced by the depletion of the lake due to climate change. He noted that this depletion of Lake Chad, a former island sea, had resulted in increased social conflicts, high rates of migration and cross border movements.

A five-year investment plan of transferring water from a river in the Congo basin to the lake would begin in 2017, the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) executive secretary Sanusi Abdullahi, said in 2013.

The project, through water contribution from the Congo River Basin, is intended to boost the receding lake to its previous size thereby allowing navigation at any season from Lake Chad to Oubangui in DR Congo.

“This five-year investment plan is tailored towards preparing the grounds for the actual issue of the transfer of water from the Congo to Lake Chad,” he said.

“There are two major existing rivers in this area that bring in water to Lake Chad - the Chari River and the Logone River. We want to improve these river systems to be able to cope with the additional flow of water.

“We have programmes to address the lake itself to improve its carrying capacity; there are invasive plants species that have taken over large areas of the lake. There is also sedimentation that has taken over large areas of the lake, so this plan is to improve the lake itself,” he said.

He said the decision of the Heads of State and Government of the Chad Basin Commission at their 14th summit in 2012 to carry out environmental study was to allay the fears of the Congo citizens who flee to Europe for greener pastures.