NGURU, YOBE STATE, NIGERIA – The soft-spoken mother, Khadija Ahmed, was middle aged and had no degree, but she recognized the forces silently eroding the life from her village.
As the Hadejia River flows grew unnatural – as the river trickled when it should be in full spate – she saw her tiny dry season farm plot change radically, reducing the food she could grow. Each year she had less millet to thresh and winnow. She saw the ribs protruding from her family’s thirsty cattle. She saw the fish catch decline, meaning she earned less income from her fish oil extraction.
She traced the changes upstream and found too much river in some places, not enough elsewhere, and weeds spreading everywhere. The situation could only worsen, unless someone stepped forward. But what could she do? Ahmed was a woman.
Men ran the military. Men controlled land rights. Men led Islam. Men – whether elected or appointed to local, state and national offices – executed all the important political decisions involving civil society. Men even controlled the private distribution market of water carts.
Women like Ahmed were traditionally kept out, expected to stay at home and raise children.
It was a quiet frustration that many elder females in northern Nigeria had learned to cope with, to quietly accept as their lot. But Ahmed felt little was gained by continued silence.
She saw how men fought over scarce water, men killed for access to water, men argued because of excessive water, and men often vented their frustrations on families at home. She knew the crippled, deformed river was the cause of all this stress, and she knew what the consequences for women would be: first tension, sometimes with violent outbursts at home; followed by hungry sons, brothers and husbands departing the village to find work in the distant damp cities, perhaps never to return.
Ahmed knew all this because – like 885,000 other Hausa-Fulani, Kanuri and Badde females in Yobe State, like nine million females throughout the basin, like 71 million women in Nigeria – she grasped water, while men grasped merely for power.
But water was power. She argued that no aspect of life could be separated from water. Water grew food. Water provided pasture. Water produced fish. Water formed bricks to build. Water prepared meals. Water sustained bodily functions. Water cleansed the body and water purified the spirit. Like most women she used water more, and more intimately, than men. She bathed children to protect their health. She cooked, scrubbed and planted it. She gathered it, carried it, stored it, and paid for it, either with her sweat or her savings.
Men didn’t seem to understand that water is shy and timid; it avoids conflict and seeks out calm peaceful consensus. So she began to speak up, first to other women, then to men who, to her surprise, began to listen and agree with her.
Ahmed became an integral part of the local Water User Association, hundreds of which had been spontaneously forming in recent years to help guide water use and decisions along the entire Komadugu Yobe River basin. Soon, for each fishing, herding or farming association, there was a matching fishing, herding and farming community based organization advocating women and children’s rights to and for water.
It was still hard to speak up when she was one woman facing nine men around a single table. But she was encouraged both by the many hundreds of women who supported her, and by the fact that the men appreciated her unique perspective.
Ahmed pointed out, with a smile, “that in fact women were the majority in the country, especially in the rural parts.” Now that Nigeria was a democracy, women’s clout should match their use of and control over water. “We are deeply involved in every aspect of fishing, herding and farming, from planting to harvest to selling at market. We should not be empty handed.”
Based on her example, and the connections she has forged with other WUAs throughout the Komadugu Yobe River basin, they won’t be.
Written by Jamie Workman