Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 406
rain. Rain can fall too early, too much, too late, or lack the right distribution throughout the
agricultural year. Too much rain at the end of the growing season might also lead to a bad harvest.
Other reasons are insects or locusts, etc.
What is striking in this context is that the famine (1998 July to September), in the Gwoza Local
Government Area, affected the plain population more seriously than the mountain population. The
reason was that there was a serious shortage of rainfall all over the north of the Mandara
Mountains the year before, but rainfall was still better in the mountains than in the adjacent plains.
Another reason was that the mountain population in general keeps a higher level of stored guinea
corn and millet than those who have already settled in the plains. People in the plains tend to sell
the guinea corn they have kept from the last guinea corn year, whereas the mountain population is
hesitant to do so.
The philosophy of subsistence economy is still more alive in the mountains than in the plains.
People in the hills are proud to still have products in storage from past years, while in the adjacent
plains this pride is replaced by pride in having money or access to a more modern lifestyle. Money
circulation happens more in the plains than in the mountains. However, what can happen in the
mountains is that too much guinea corn is sold in the form of beer throughout the year.
All this leads us to infer that natural causes for a bad harvest are only partly responsible for the
occurrence of serious famine. Modern personhood builds its self esteem through acquiring a
modern lifestyle, which seems to make people more vulnerable to the effects of natural causes,
leading to food shortages. Prices go high in such times, and people can no longer afford to buy
guinea corn, millet or beans if such shortages become as serious as they became this year in 1998.
During the planting season (1998 May to July) the price of a measure of seeds was between 100
and 150 Naira. Now after the harvest, the price of a measure of guinea corn is between 25 and 30
Naira. People still had millet and beans to eat from the year before. From July to September
famine appeared with its peak in August 1998. People had run out of millet and beans, especially
in the plains, because they had either already sold too much or they had hired out land for onions,
groundnuts and cotton. Now the cause for the famine was a shortage of basic foodstuffs due to
household management, whose leading principles are guided by a market rather than a subsistence
economy. Therefore around August 1998 there was a shortage of foodstuffs, leading to prices
running high which in turn resulted in too little money being available to pay for what was
needed.
The Nigerian government did not provide help from a welfare or emergency fund. Christians only
received money from Peter [a German from Gava who worked for the Basel Mission]. Only a few
Moslems and Traditionalists profited from the bags of millet and maize which Peter had bought
with his own money.
People who went to Adamawa to buy foodstuffs from the market were troubled by police and
customs officers on the way. I am not aware of any international aid coming into the Gwoza Local
Government Area. This was different on the Cameroonian side of the northern Mandara
Mountains, where the European Community supplied bags of foodstuffs (mainly maize) to be
distributed among the suffering local communities. This was thanks to the Northern Mandara
Development Project of this area having good links with the European Community and other
international organisations.
The above account contrasts the modern market economy with the traditional subsistence
economy, and illustrates the shortcomings of the former in cases of food crisis. It also refers
to changes in value orientations which impact the self perception of personhood as part of that
modern development. Even though Traditionalism had long been reduced to the purely
economic aspect of subsistence as a form of day-to-day survival, the mountains still had a
potential advantage due to the cultural habit of keeping at least one granary filled for
emergencies. This shows that it was not just the potentially higher rainfalls in the mountains
which helped to get through the food crisis during the rainy season of 1998, but the habit of
keeping crops in reserve.
This was the same old cultural style of subsistence that was exploited by Boko Haram in
Gwoza town when they used the hills as a backup and a retreat, until they left and no longer
needed it. Because the national defense system had failed, there had been no possible defense.
Defence against the invasion of strangers, as seen in the ritual performance of the ngwa yiye
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