A battle against drought and deluge in Checheyi community of Kwali Area Council

​In the community of Checheyi, nestled within the Kwali Area Council of Abuja, It glared down on the wide expanse of earth, turning the communal soil into a hardened, cracked mosaic.

“We are experiencing a severe lack of water. No rain at all. You see these rice plants? They are meant to be thriving now, but they are just drying up completely.” Says Mrs Haruna. It was the story of every farmer in Checheyi. The reliable rhythm of the seasons had been broken.

She says “Where planting once guaranteed five full bags of produce, now the community was lucky to salvage two, sometimes only one and a half. This quantifiable loss represented far more than just reduced yield it meant hunger and the constant fear of ruin”. Mrs Haruna’s plea for assistance was simple: they needed fertilizer to give their struggling plants a fighting chance against the drought’s persistent heat.
​But the drought was only half the threat.

​Hamzat, another farmer, spoke of the other extreme, which he considered the major disaster. “The main issue we are facing in this village now, Checheyi, is the flood that affects us severely,” he stated. He pointed out the cruel paradox: while the land cried out for moisture most of the time, the heavy rains that did arrive were too violent to be beneficial.

​”The flood that comes, it destroys our farm badly,” Hamzat explained. “If you plant a seed, the flood will just be washed away to a place you don’t know. Then the farm will be destroyed.” All the efforts invested in planting were often wiped out by a single deluge.

​Hamzat’s request to the government was not for temporary handouts, but for permanent infrastructure.
He appealed for assistance to find a lasting solution for the relentless flooding.

Specifically, he asked for the construction of a proper channel a dedicated route for the water to pass that could manage the sudden influx and “reduce the flood on our farming land.”

​For the people of Checheyi, their lives are defined by this relentless, ruinous cycle. They are trapped between the long, slow death by thirst and the quick, violent destruction by flood.

Their fight is a poignant testament to the human resilience required to farm when the very forces of nature swing wildly between devastating extremes, and their demand for a water channel represents the desperate hope for balance in a climate-changed world.

Oladosu Adebola