Insurgents Took Over Their Lake. But They Stayed to Feed a Hungry Region

Since his early teenage years in the 1990s, Yusuf Usman has drawn his livelihood from the waters of Lake Chad in his hometown of Baga, northeastern Nigeria. He recalls a time before the Boko Haram insurgency hit hard, when he would cast a net and return home with a heavy catch to feed his family and sell at the market.

Today, the 41-year-old said that those bountiful days are long gone. But he refuses to abandon his net and continues to wade into the shallows near Baga to bring home whatever catch he can.

In a phone call with FairPlanet, Ibrahim Mustapha Sulumbe, a professor of Agricultural Economics at the University of Maiduguri, said that up to 15 million people across Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, and Chad depend on Lake Chad for farming, fishing, and livestock. In this ecosystem, fishing stands out as a primary source of protein for low-income earners.

More than a decade of violent conflict driven by armed groups, including Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), has since altered how fish is harvested. Historically, deep-water zones yielded the largest catches, said Usman, but Professor Sulumbe explained to FairPlanet that insurgents have since occupied these areas, turning them into lucrative revenue sources by extorting local workers.

‘Before the crisis, we moved freely,’ Usman told FairPlanet. ‘Now, we can only fish nearby around Baga where there is a security presence. But in further areas where there is no security, it's risky.’

Unlike Usman, other fishers have ventured beyond the safe zones. To cast their nets in deeper waters, they pay levies to the insurgents, surrender a portion of their catch, or risk losing their lives. But they accept these dangers as long as they return home with fish.

As they continue to keep this trade alive, these fishers supply the traders who sustain an important source of protein for communities suffering under insurgency-driven hunger. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 41.8 million people face acute food insecurity across West Africa and the Sahel, a figure the agency warns could rise to 52.8 million across the Lake Chad region during the lean season as nutrition aid declines.

Restricted to guarded waters near the shore while the lake recedes, fishers are bringing back far less than they once did. ‘Annual fish production in the basin has dropped from roughly 220,000 tonnes in the 1960s to between 50,000 and 60,000 tonnes today,’ Professor Sulumbe told FairPlanet on a phone call in August. This resulted in a single carton of raw fish now costing up to €71 in Baga’s shore markets.

The supply chain

Once the fish leaves the water, it travels to Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, and other accessible markets across the region. Alai Gana, a trader who has managed distribution since 1991, spends his days coordinating weekly arrivals from Baga and Gamboru Ngala in Nigeria, as well as shores in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. From there, he sells directly to local retail buyers and supplies wholesale traders who transport the catch across the country.

‘When fish is brought in, it doesn’t stay here,’ Gana said, walking past rows of dried mangala, a local catfish variety. ‘Some people take it to Enugu and Asaba, while others take it to Lagos, Abuja, Kaduna, and Kano.’

But moving the fish out of the conflict zone remains a challenge. Key routes, such as the Damasak road in Borno, remain impassable for commercial drivers due to security threats. To bring fish from border areas, drivers are forced into long and costly detours through Geidam in Yobe State before finally reaching Maiduguri.

En route, drivers encounter security checkpoints and must pay fees that push up transport costs and inflate retail prices of fish reaching consumer markets. However, even with these hurdles, medium-sized J5 vans carrying over 100 cartons of fish arrive daily at Maiduguri's main fish market. And from there, traders offload and sort them before loading them onto heavy multi-axle trailers, some carrying up to 300 cartons per trip, bound for wholesale markets across Nigeria.

A trade fighting to survive

Security risks are only half the battle. On the water, fishers are fighting a rapidly shifting climate and dying shorelines.

‘As Africa’s largest freshwater basin, Lake Chad relies on river networks flowing in from five different countries,’ Muhammad Bello Ibrahim, a professor of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Maiduguri, told FairPlanet. ‘But global warming has drastically reduced those water levels over the years. Because the rivers feeding the lake are never dredged, decades of washed-in debris have choked the waterways, as satellite images from the past three decades clearly show.’

Professor Bello added that fishing activities are hardly regulated on the Nigerian side, which has led to a serious collapse in fish populations and species. ‘Governance remains weak and neither public authorities nor private groups are stepping in with sustainable solutions,’ he said.

Rising inflation across Nigeria makes this difficult trade even harder. Usman told FairPlanet that a standard fishing net now costs up to €103, while a basic wooden canoe costs over €190. Without enough money for boats, poorer fishers wade knee-deep into dangerous waters on foot.

But in a region where jobs are scarce and millions remain displaced, the fish trade is a key way to survive. Mustapha Adamu, 32, learned the business from his father and now employs five young men at his processing site in Maiduguri.

‘This trade teaches youth to be self-reliant,’ Adamu told FairPlanet at Baga Road Fish Market. ‘Thousands of people rely solely on this as their only source of livelihood – from the workers who sort fish bones and the street cutters to women buying bulk stocks for online retail. Apart from earning a living, keeping this work going gives young men an alternative to joining armed groups that exploit poverty.’

Solutions for survival

Professor Sulumbe noted that half of the fish caught in the region spoils before reaching consumer markets because fishers lack access to cold storage and refrigerated trucks.

‘Setting up local processing hubs and cooling warehouses would cut those losses in half,’ he said. ‘It would stop fishers from dumping their catch at giveaway prices just to avoid total loss.’

With thousands of displaced families depending on the trade, he added that extension training programmes and access to small loans are critical to keeping small-scale operators afloat.

For traders like Gana, survival comes down to reopening blockaded transit routes like the Damasak road and clearing out illegal roadside tolls, which, if achieved, would immediately lower shipping costs and ease retail prices across the markets.

Meanwhile, to save the shoreline, Professor Bello pointed to the necessity of having inter-basin water transfers to recharge the lake and enforcing clear rules against overfishing.

But such big policies seem far away from the lake for now, and fishers wading into the lake said they are used to the challenges, and it's how they earn a living to support their families. ‘Leaving this job to start over somewhere else isn't possible. So as long as the water is there, we will keep fishing,’ said Usman.