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Rural protest, land policy and the planning process on the Bakolori Project, Nigeria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

W. M. Adams
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Extract

In the literature and accumulated folk wisdom of development in rural Africa there are numerous instances of government projects which are expensive, ineffective and unpopular. These include now classic failures of the past, such as the Tanganyika Groundnuts Scheme (Wood, 1950; Frankel, 1953), which are still cited as cautionary tales demonstrating the need for proper project appraisal. There are also numerous more recent examples, for the phenomenon of failure has persisted and governments and international agencies continue to implement schemes ‘little better planned than their more spectacularly misbegotten predecessors’ (Hill, 1978: 25). Among recent initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa the large-scale irrigation projects developed in northern Nigeria during the 1970s have attracted particularly extensive adverse criticism. This has focused on the social and economic impact of the introduction of irrigation and particularly on questions of land tenure (inter alia Wallace, 1979, 1980, 1981; Oculi, 1981; Adams, 1982, 1984; Palmer-Jones, 1984; Andrae and Beckman, 1985; Beckman, 1986). A number of accounts discuss technical aspects of the land survey carried out at Bakolori {Bird, 1981, 1984, 1985; Griffith, 1984), while others focus on economic problems (e.g. Etuk and Abalu, 1982). However, although economic and technical aspects of these developments have been criticised, it is the social impacts of project development and more particularly the political responses to those impacts which are of greatest interest (Wallace, 1980; Adams, 1984; Andrae and Beckman, 1985; Beckman, 1986). This paper examines the bature of the response of farmers affected by one of these schemes, the Bakolori Project in Sokoto State.

Résumé

Protestations rurales, politique foncière et planification du Projet Bakolori, Nigéria

Les projets d'irrigation à grande échelle dans le nord du Nigéria dans les années 70 ont été critiqués pour des raisons à la fois sociales et économiques. Le projet Bakolori dans l'état de Sokoto est particulièrement important à cause des protestations ouvertes des fermiers au sujet de la politique foncière et des indemnités. Cet article examine la nature et le développement de ces protestations dans le contexte des perceptions, du comportement et des actions des organisations impliquées dans ce développement. Le point de mire est la nature et, par conséquent, la réforme possible de la planification du projet. Le rapport suggère des défaillances techniques dans l'évaluation, la conception et la réalisation, causées en partie par un préjugé contre les disciplines des sciences sociales. Les protestations des fermiers se sont intensifiés au cours de la construction, en grande partie parce que les acteurs sont devenus prisonniers du contrat et n'avaient pas la liberté d'innover ou de changer la forme ou la direction des développements par crainte d'avoir à assumer les coûts des retards. Les implications de la planification du projet sont discutées.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , July 1988 , pp. 315 - 336
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1988

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