Nigeria’s 80 million hibernating farmers

Hibernation is a state of inactivity that is characterized by low body temperature, slow breathing, heart, and low metabolic rate. Associated with cold temperatures, the purpose is to conserve energy when food is scarce. To achieve this, hibernating animals slow their metabolic rate, resulting in a decreased body temperature. Hibernation may last several days, weeks, or months, depending on the species, temperature, time of year and other conditions.

In a way, Nigeria’s farmers are in a state of hibernation: Apart from the few who are fortunate enough to live in areas where irrigation facilities exist and who have the skills and equipment to engage in dry season farming, most of Nigeria’s 80 million farmers are practically hibernating at the moment. After working energetically to gather food during the rainy season, they spend the rest of the year engaged in almost no productive activity.

In this day and age, and considering Nigeria’s vast potentials in irrigated agriculture, this is nothing short of criminal waste and negligence. And to indicate the confusion in the agricultural sector, no one can tell you how many farmers there really are in Nigeria.

Last week while defending his ministry’s plan to spend billions of naira to distribute 10 million phones to farmers in rural areas, the Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina said, “Nigeria has 110 million cellphones, the largest in Africa. But there is a huge divide: the bulk of the phones are in urban areas. The rural areas are heavily excluded. For agriculture, which employs 70% of the population, that means the farmers are excluded and marginalized. In today’s world, the most powerful tool is a mobile phone. As Minister of Agriculture, I want the entire rural space of Nigeria, and farmers to be included, not excluded, from advantages of mobile phone revolution.”

One problem is, going by the minister’s math, 70% of 160 million is closer to 112 million. So does Nigeria have 112 million farmers? In reality, the problem of Nigerian farmers is not mobile phones or even electronic access to markets: When farmers spend about half of the year doing nothing, and after they take out from their stocks to feed their families, what would be left to take to markets? And assuming the markets are ready, where are the roads to convey the produce to the markets before they perish?

How can Nigeria’s agricultural output grow when our farmers (is it 80 or 112 million?) still depend largely on rain-fed farming? In other words, our farmer only work during the rainy season and spend the rest of the year practically hibernating, save the few who migrate to urban centres to seek work as seasonal labourers. When rains fail as they occasionally do, or when flooding occurs, farming for that year is ruined.

And it is not as if government is not aware of what needs to be done. The Minister of Water Resources, Sarah Ochekpe recently spoke about plans to attain food security in Nigeria, explaining that government had concluded plans to rehabilitate irrigation projects across the 36 states of the federation. “For a start, we have already identified 57 irrigation projects across the country for investment by the Federal Government. These are critical facilities that we must pay attention to; certainly we cannot achieve food security without irrigation development”.

The problem, again, is that since the Ministry of Water Resources was established some 40 years ago, practically all the ministers have repeated the same thing. The truth is that Nigeria has not had the discipline to design and implement a workable irrigation master-plan that would keep our farmers busy all year round, producing food not only for local consumption, but the international markets as well.

Without putting this foundation in place, Dr. Adesina’s mission to “arm them (farmers) with modern information systems . . . connecting to supermarkets and international markets require that farmers know and meet stringent consumer-driven grades and standards” will amount to building a superstructure without a base.

It is true that the availability of water varies tremendously but even with limited water supplies, irrigation can vastly increase agricultural productivity. Underused water resources in Nigeria offer great potential for irrigation, especially using simple and inexpensive methods, but over the years, our dependence on rainfall has remained a major constraint to agriculture and poverty reduction. The vulnerability of our food security is significant because of the combination of highly variable and erratic rainfall and poor development of irrigation. Other constraints include poor management skills and markets, unfavourable land and water policies and poor access to credit by the farmers who need it.

Increased irrigated agriculture is a key to reducing poverty. Nigeria must recognize the value of irrigation in job creation, poverty eradication and food security. With irrigation, Nigeria may earn more foreign exchange than we do from oil and other minerals combined. Millions of jobs would be created and food security enhanced. Many environmental challenges would be mitigated and we will be weaned of our lethargic, short-sighted dependence on crude oil exports.

-KANDE ADDA DANJUMA

KUW/U14/SLG/2002

RURAL POVERTY IN NIGERIA

The Federal Republic of Nigeria has a population of more than 160 million – the largest in Africa – and a fast-growing economy. Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, contributing about 40 per cent of GDP. The agriculture sector employs approximately two-thirds of the country's total labour force and provides a livelihood for about 90 per cent of the rural population. Nigeria is the world's largest producer of cassava, yam and cowpea – all staple foods in sub-Saharan Africa. It is also a major producer of fish. Yet it is a food-deficit nation and imports large amounts of grain, livestock products and fish.

Nigeria's huge agricultural resource base offers great potential for growth. Recent government policies have started to show results: The agricultural sector reportedly grew by 7 per cent a year between 2003 and 2007, and at a slightly lower rate in recent years.

Still, the area of land under cultivation could be doubled. Of an estimated 71 million hectares of arable land, only about half is presently under production. And there is substantial scope for an increase in irrigation, which now covers only 7 per cent of irrigable land. Irrigation and other inputs would substantially increase average yields for major staple crops, which are below those in other developing countries.

Despite Nigeria's plentiful agricultural resources and oil wealth, poverty is widespread in the country and has increased since the late 1990s. Some 70 per cent of Nigerians live on less than US$1.25 a day.

Poverty is especially severe in rural areas, where up to 80 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line, and social services and infrastructure are limited. The country's poor rural women and men depend on agriculture for food and income. About 90 per cent of Nigeria's food is produced by small-scale farmers who cultivate small plots of land and depend on rainfall rather than irrigation systems.

The poorest groups eke out a subsistence living but often go short of food, particularly during the pre-harvest period. The productivity of the rural population is also hindered by ill health, particularly HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

Women play a major role in the production, processing and marketing of food crops. Yet women and households headed solely by women are often the most chronically poor members of rural communities. Men have higher social status and, as a result, more access to schooling and training. In recent decades, the number of men migrating from rural areas in search of employment has increased, and the number of households headed solely by women has grown substantially.

Rural infrastructure in Nigeria has long been neglected. Investments in health, education and water supply have been focused largely on the cities. As a result, the rural population has extremely limited access to services such as schools and health centres, and about half of the population lacks access to safe drinking water.

Neglect of rural infrastructure affects the profitability of agricultural production. The lack of rural roads impedes the marketing of agricultural commodities, prevents farmers from selling their produce at reasonable prices, and leads to spoilage. Limited accessibility cuts small-scale farmers off from sources of inputs, equipment and new technology, and this keeps yields low.

As the population swells and puts pressure on diminishing resources, escalating environmental problems further threaten food production. Land degradation as a result of extensive agriculture, deforestation and overgrazing are already severe in many parts of the country. Drought has become common in the north, and erosion caused by heavy rains, floods and oil pollution is a major problem in the south and south-east.

Civil unrest also aggravates poverty. Religious and ethnic tensions continue to brew in different parts of Nigeria, erupting into outbreaks of violence and leading, in turn, to escalating poverty and malnutrition.

-SARAYA AUDU JOSHUA

KUW/U14/SLG/2004

SOCIALIZATION

Socialization is the process by which children and adults learn from others. We begin learning from others during the early days of life; and most people continue their social learning all through life (unless some mental or physical disability slows or stops the learning process). Sometimes the learning is fun, as when we learn a new sport, art or musical technique from a friend we like. At other times, social learning is painful, as when we learn not to drive too fast by receiving a large fine for speeding.

        Natural socialization occurs when infants and youngsters explore, play and discover the social world around them. Planned socialization occurs when other people take actions designed to teach or train others -- from infancy on. Natural socialization is easily seen when looking at the young of almost any mammalian species (and some birds). Planned socialization is mostly a human phenomenon; and all through history, people have been making plans for teaching or training others. Both natural and planned socialization can have good and bad features: It is wise to learn the best features of both natural and planned socialization and weave them into our lives.

        Positive socialization is the type of social learning that is based on pleasurable and exciting experiences. We tend to like the people who fill our social learning processes with positive motivation, loving care, and rewarding opportunities. Negative socialization occurs when others use punishment, harsh criticisms or anger to try to "teach us a lesson;" and often we come to dislike both negative socialization and the people who impose it on us.

          There are all types of mixes of positive and negative socialization; and the more positive social learning experiences we have, the happier we tend to be -- especially if we learn useful information that helps us cope well with the challenges of life. A high ratio of negative to positive socialization can make a person unhappy, defeated or pessimistic about life. One of the goals of this is to show people how to increase the ratio of positive to negative in the socialization they receive from others -- and that they give to others. [Some people will defend negative socialization, since painful training can prepare people to be ready to fight and die in battle, put themselves at great risk in order to save others, endure torture and hardship. This is true; but many people receive far more negative socialization than they need, and hopefully fewer and fewer people will need to be trained for battle, torture and hardship.]

This shows that positive socialization, coupled with valuable information about life and the skills needed to live well, can be a powerful tool for promoting human development. We all have an enormous human potential, and we all could develop a large portion of it if we had the encouragement that comes from positive socialization and the wisdom that comes from valuable information about living. Information about both natural and planned socialization can be especially useful.

          Our prior socialization helps explain a gigantic chunk of who we are at present -- what we think and feel, where we plan to go in life. But we are not limited by the things given to us by our prior social learning experiences; we can take all our remaining days and steer our future social learning in directions that we value. The more that we know about the socialization process, the more effective we can be in directing our future learning in the ways that will help us most.

          Because we were not able to select our parents, we were not able to control much of the first 10 or 20 years of our socialization. However, most people learn to influence their own socialization as they gain experience in life. It takes special skills to steer and direct our own socialization, and many of us pick up some of those skills naturally as we go through life. Having a course on socialization can help us understand which skills are most effective in guiding our socialization toward the goals we most value.

          It is important to know that we all come into life with a variety of psychology systems that foster self-actualization and favor the development of our human potential. These are the biosocial mechanisms that underlie natural socialization. We can see and study natural socialization by examining the socialization of primates and other mammals. Once we under the natural biosocial processes, we can try to build strategies of self-actualization that are compatible with the natural biosocial mechanisms we are born with to make self-development as easy and rewarding as possible.

-FATIMA NA'ANMIAP

KUW/U14/SLG/2022

DRUG ABUSE

Many people do not understand why people become addicted to drugs or how drugs change the brain to foster compulsive drug abuse. They mistakenly view drug abuse and addiction as strictly a social problem and may characterize those who take drugs as morally weak. One very common belief is that drug abusers should be able to just stop taking drugs if they are only willing to change their behavior.

What people often underestimate is the complexity of drug addiction -- that it is a disease that impacts the brain, and because of that, stopping drug abuse is not simply a matter of willpower. Through scientific advances we now know much more about how exactly drugs work in the brain, and we also know that drug addiction can be successfully treated to help people stop abusing drugs and resume productive lives.

What Is Drug Addiction?

Drug addiction is a chronic, often relapsing brain disease that causes compulsive drug seeking and use, despite harmful consequences to the drug addict and those around them. Drug addiction is a brain disease because the abuse of drugs leads to changes in the structure and function of the brain. Although it is true that for most people the initial decision to take drugs is voluntary, over time the changes in the brain caused by repeated drug abuse can affect a person's self-control and ability to make sound decisions, and at the same time create an intense impulse to take drugs.

It is because of these changes in the brain that it is so challenging for a person who is addicted to stop abusing drugs. Fortunately, there are treatments that help people to counteract addiction's powerful disruptive effects and regain control. Research shows that combining addiction treatment medications, if available, with behavioral therapy is the best way to ensure success for most patients. Treatment approaches that are tailored to each patient's drug abuse patterns and any concurrent medical, psychiatric, and social problems can lead to sustained recovery and a life without drugs.

As with other chronic diseases, such as diabetes, asthma, or heart disease, drug addiction can be managed effectively.Yet, it is not uncommon for a person to relapse and begin abusing drugs again. Relapse does not signal failure; rather, it indicates that treatment should be reinstated or adjusted, or that alternate treatment is needed to help the person regain control and recover.

Drugs are chemicals that tap into the brain's communication system and disrupt the way nerve cells normally send, receive, and process information. There are at least two ways that drugs are able to do this: by imitating the brain's natural chemical messengers, and/or over stimulating the "reward circuit" of the brain.

Some drugs, such as marijuana and heroin, have a similar structure to chemical messengers, called neurotransmitters, which are naturally produced by the brain. Because of this similarity, these drugs are able to "fool" the brain's receptors and activate nerve cells to send abnormal messages.

Other drugs, such as cocaine or methamphetamine, can cause the nerve cells to release abnormally large amounts of natural neurotransmitters, or prevent the normal recycling of these brain chemicals, which is needed to shut off the signal between neurons. This disruption produces a greatly amplified message that ultimately disrupts normal communication patterns.

Nearly all drugs, directly or indirectly, target the brain's reward system by flooding the circuit with dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter present in regions of the brain that control movement, emotion, motivation, and feelings of pleasure. The overstimulation of this system, which normally responds to natural behaviors that are linked to survival (eating, spending time with loved ones, etc), produces euphoric effects in response to the drugs. This reaction sets in motion a pattern that "teaches" people to repeat the behavior of abusing drugs.

As a person continues to abuse drugs, the brain adapts to the dopamine surges by producing less dopamine or reducing dopamine receptors. The user must therefore keep abusing drugs to bring his or her dopamine function back to ''normal'' or use more drugs to achieve a dopamine high.

Long-term drug abuse causes changes in other brain chemical systems and circuits, as well. Brain imaging studies of drug-addicted individuals show changes in areas of the brain that are critical to judgment, decision-making, learning and memory, and behavior control. Together, these changes can drive an abuser to seek out and take drugs compulsively -- in other words, to become addicted to drugs.

Drug addiction is a preventable disease. Research has shown that prevention programs that involve the family, schools, communities, and the media are effective in reducing drug abuse. Although many events and cultural factors affect drug abuse trends, when youths perceive drug abuse as harmful, they reduce their drug taking. It is necessary, therefore, to help youth and the general public to understand the risks of drug abuse and for teachers, parents, and health care professionals to keep sending the message that drug addiction can be prevented if a person never abuses drugs.

-FATIMA NA'ANMIAP

KUW/U14/SLG/2022

SEXUAL CHILD ABUSE

Child abuse is the physical, sexual or emotional maltreatment or neglect of a child or children. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department for Children and Families (DCF) define child maltreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or other caregiver that results in harm, potential for harm, or threat of harm to a child. Child abuse can occur in a child's home, or in the organizations, schools or communities the child interacts with. There are four major categories of child abuse: neglect, physical abuse, psychological or emotional abuse, and sexual abuse.

In Western countries, preventing child abuse is considered a high priority, and detailed laws and policies exist to address this issue. Different jurisdictions have developed their own definitions of what constitutes child abuse for the purposes of removing a child from his/her family and/or prosecuting a criminal charge. According to the Journal of Child Abuse and Neglect, child abuse is "any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation, an act or failure to act which presents an imminent risk of serious harm".

Douglas J. Besharov, the first Director of the U.S. Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, states "the existing laws are often vague and overly broad" and there is a "lack of consensus among professionals and Child Protective Services (CPS) personnel about what the terms abuse and neglect mean". Susan Orr, former head of the United States Children's Bureau U.S. Department of Health and Services Administration for Children and Families, 2001–2007, states that "much that is now defined as child abuse and neglect does not merit governmental interference".

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent abuses a child for sexual stimulation. Sexual abuse refers to the participation of a child in a sexual act aimed toward the physical gratification or the financial profit of the person committing the act. Forms of CSA include asking or pressuring a child to engage in sexual activities (regardless of the outcome), indecent exposure of the genitals to a child, displaying pornography to a child, actual sexual contact with a child, physical contact with the child's genitals, viewing of the child's genitalia without physical contact, or using a child to produce child pornography. Selling the sexual services of children may be viewed and treated as child abuse with services offered to the child rather than simple incarceration.

Effects of child sexual abuse on the victim(s) include guilt and self-blame, flashbacks, nightmares, insomnia, fear of things associated with the abuse (including objects, smells, places, doctor's visits, etc.), self-esteem issues, sexual dysfunction, chronic pain, addiction, self-injury, suicidal ideation, somatic complaints, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, other mental illnesses including borderline personality disorder and dissociative identity disorder,^] propensity to re-victimization in adulthood,bulimia nervosa, and physical injury to the child, among other problems Children who are the victims are also at an increased risk of sexually transmitted infections due to their immature immune systems and a high potential for mucosal tears during forced sexual contact. Sexual victimization at a young age has been correlated with several risk factors for contracting HIV including decreased knowledge of sexual topics, increased prevalence of HIV, engagement in risky sexual practices, condom avoidance, lower knowledge of safe sex practices, frequent changing of sexual partners, and more years of sexual activity. In the United States, approximately 15% to 25% of women and 5% to 15% of men were sexually abused when they were children. Most sexual abuse offenders are acquainted with their victims; approximately 30% are relatives of the child, most often brothers, fathers, mothers, uncles or cousins; around 60% are other acquaintances such as friends of the family, babysitters, or neighbours; strangers are the offenders in approximately 10% of child sexual abuse cases In over one-third of cases, the perpetrator is also a minor.

In 1999 the BBC reported on the RAHI Foundation's survey of sexual abuse in India, in which 76% of respondents said they had been abused as children, 40% of those stating the perpetrator was a family member.

 -UMORU YUSUF SADIQ

KUW/U14/SLG/2029

It’s Time For People to Stop Using the Social Construct of “Biological Sex” to Defend Their Transmisogyny

Time and time again, transmisogynists and transphobes go back to that old excuse that they are just standing up for the reality of “biological sex” when they spew their ignorance and hate. They say that no matter what a trans woman does, no matter what she believes, she’s still actually a man. Others cede the fact that trans women are women, but stop there and say “gender is what’s between your ears, sex is what’s between your legs” and therefore trans women are still males. Although this is a popular idea, it is based on a misunderstanding of biology, social constructs and anatomy, and it needs to stop.

A lot of this misuse of the idea of “biological sex” has, unfortunately, been centered around discussions of activist and Orange is the New Black actressLaverne Cox. Cox recently became the first out trans person (Chelsea Manning was on the cover before she came out) to be on the cover of Time Magazine. However, inside the magazine, Time said that an easy way to gain some understanding of trans people is to realize that gender and sex are two different things. They say that “sex is biological, determined by a baby’s birth anatomy” and then go on to call trans women “biological males” and trans men “biological females.”

They are trying to good allies, explaining what many see as a complicated issue, but what they are really doing is using a simplistic and outdated understanding of biology to perpetuate some very dangerous ideas about trans women. This type of dialogue allows people to think that they are doing trans people a service, when really they are just continuing to see them as something other than “real women.”

Another article about Cox came out at about the same time. This one, however, was very upfront about using what its author thinks is a good understanding of biology to claim that trans women are not even women at all. Written by Kevin D. Williamson for the National Review and later republished by the Chicago Sun-Times (who then removed it and issued an apology), this article is called “Laverne Cox is Not a Woman” and aggressively uses Williamson’s complete misunderstanding of “biological sex” (and yes, I’m using scare quotes on purpose) to misgender not only Cox, but all other trans people. He says that we need to pay attention to the “biological reality” of sex instead of the delusional world that trans people are living in.

In the article, Williamson says that (get ready for some extreme ignorance and hate here) we are experiencing a new transgender phenomenon, one where we have lost grip on reality. He says that we have an “obsession with policing language (that is based) on the theory that language mystically shapes reality…” However, just because we say trans women are women, that, according to him, doesn’t change the fact that they are men.

He instead calls Cox “an effigy of a woman,” based on his belief that sex is a biological reality and “is not subordinate to subjective impressions…” He adds that “No hormone injection or surgical mutilation is sufficient to change that.” He seems to believe that sex as we describe it is a thing that just exists, that a clear, inarguable and binary definition for sex just springs forth from nature. Unfortunately, Williamson isn’t alone in this type of rhetoric. There’s actually a wide group of people, some “allies,” some lawmakers and some just outright bigots who all rally behind the idea of using the social construct of “biological sex” to misgender trans women.

The thing people like Williamson want to cling to the most is the idea that sex is an immutable, universal biological reality that is therefore easy to categorize. Although many are willing to call trans women women (or specifically “trans women” or “transwomen” or even “male women”), they say that that is just their gender. They argue that gender is cultural and that sex is an unchanging biological fact, and that therefore their sex is still male. This is used to support “Womyn born Womyn” spaces, create fear around so-called “bathroom bills,” disallow trans women from competing in women’s sports and even defend violence against trans women.

Since “biological sex” is actually a social construct, those who say that it is not often have to argue about what it entails. Some say it’s based on chromosomes (of which there are many non-XX/XY combinations, as well asdiversity among people with XY chromosomes), others say it’s genitals or gonads (either at birth or at the moment you’re talking about), others say it’s hormone levels (which vary widely and can be manipulated), still others say it’s secondary sex characteristics like the appearance of breasts, body hair and muscle mass (which vary even more). Some say that it’s a combination of all of them. Now, this creates a huge problem, as sex organs, secondary sex characteristics and hormone levels aren’t anywhere close to being universal to all men or women, males or females.

 -SAM S STEPHEN