YOU CAN START YOUR SMALL POULTRY WITH CASSAVA PEELS, SLUDGE AND LEFTOVERS AS FEEDSTOCK

Omolara Thomas

Cassava peels, sludge, and leftovers can be used as feedstock for your poultry, but they should be processed properly to ensure safety and nutritional value. Peels can be dried and ground into a meal, while sludge and leftovers might need treatment to remove toxins. Supplementing with other feed sources may be necessary to ensure a balanced diet for the poultry. Consulting with a veterinarian or poultry nutritionist is advisable for specific recommendations.

HOW TO INCORPORATE CASSAVA INTO POULTRY FEED TO REDUCE COST:

Incorporating cassava into poultry feed can be a cost-effective strategy. Cassava can replace a portion of the traditional feed ingredients like corn or wheat. However, it's important to note that cassava contains cyanogenic glucosides, which can be toxic if not properly processed. Here's a basic guide:

1. Processing: Cassava should be processed to remove cyanide compounds. This typically involves peeling, chipping, soaking, and drying. Ensuring thorough processing is essential to eliminate toxins.

2. Balancing:  Cassava can replace up to 10-20% of traditional grains in poultry feed formulations. Balance the rest of the ingredients to maintain nutritional requirements. Consult with a poultry nutritionist to formulate a balanced diet.

3. Energy Source:  Cassava is high in carbohydrates and can serve as an energy source in poultry diets. Adjust the amount based on the energy requirements of your birds and the energy content of other feed ingredients.

4. Protein Supplementation:  Cassava is low in protein, so additional protein sources may be needed to meet the birds' requirements. Consider adding soybean meal, fish meal, or other protein-rich ingredients.

5. Gradual Introduction:  Introduce cassava gradually into the feed to allow birds to adjust and monitor their performance and health.

6. Quality Control:  Regularly test the quality of cassava and the feed to ensure it meets nutritional requirements and is free from contaminants.

By following these steps, you can effectively incorporate cassava into poultry feed to reduce costs while maintaining the health and performance of your birds.

Physical properties of cassava-based diets are important factors limiting feed intake. Thus cassava-based diets should be fed to poultry in pellet forms or after the addition of fat or molasses to eliminate dust and improve texture.

 

CHEAPER FEED SOURCES FOR YOUR SMALL CHICKEN FARM

 

Omolara Thomas (Ibadan)

Poultry feed are the highest cost input and the biggest constraint to poultry development in Nigeria. Nigeria does not grow enough maize to meet poultry production expectations, but the small scale farmer can be creative in providing innovative feed sources for his farm.

There are several innovative and cost-effective ways to make poultry feeds:

 

Use Local Ingredients: Utilize locally available grains, legumes, and by-products like rice bran, wheat bran, maize, and soybean meal.

 

Substitute Ingredients: Replace expensive ingredients with more affordable alternatives. For example, you can use cassava meal, sweet potato vines, or sunflower seed meal as substitutes.

 

Mealworm Farming: Consider raising mealworms as a protein source. Mealworms are rich in protein and can be grown using organic waste materials like vegetable scraps or grain hulls. You can also grow large quantities of earthworms by the riverside. These are milled and dried or fed fresh. Worm feeds can raise egg production by as much as 30%.

 

Black Soldier Fly Larvae: Black soldier fly larvae are another excellent source of protein and can be cultivated using organic waste. They can be fed to poultry either fresh or dried.

 

Fermentation: Fermenting grains can increase their digestibility and nutrient availability for poultry. This process also helps in reducing feed costs.

 

Vertical Integration: If feasible, consider vertically integrating your operations by growing some of the feed ingredients yourself. For example, if you have space, grow corn or other grains.

 

Community Co-ops: Collaborate with other local poultry farmers to purchase feed ingredients in bulk, reducing costs through economies of scale.

 

Alternative Protein Sources: Look into unconventional protein sources like duckweed, algae, or insect meal.

 

Supplement with Kitchen Scraps: Utilize kitchen scraps like vegetable trimmings, fruit peels, and leftover grains to supplement the birds' diet.

 

Precision Feeding: Implement precision feeding techniques to ensure that the birds receive the right amount of nutrients without excess waste. This can involve formulating feed rations based on the specific nutritional needs of the birds at different stages of growth.

 

 

BIG GAINS AWAIT PALM OIL TRADERS

Kene Romina

End of February signals buying season for palm oil, waiting for the price highs of October through to December.

 Some of the largest oil palm plantations in Nigeria are located in Edo State. The state is home to the two largest oil palm plantations in Nigeria namely Okomu Oil Palm Plantation and Presco Oil Palm Plantations and they both produce the best grade and most sought after palm oil in Nigeria.

 Flourmills Nigeria, Dufil and Saro Africa are all planting thousands of hectares of oil palm plantations in Edo State.

Forecasts in the price of staples suggests unprecedented gains for traders buying palm oil for storage until end of year. These traders stand to reap gains of 75% at end of year when 25 litre kegs are expected to rise above N40,000.

Palm oil is selling now for between N18 – N25 per 25 litres keg of the non-technical grade and buyers are expecting a boom season beginning from October. Traders who store oil for the boom season are looking out for gains of over 75% by October through December.

Last year’s performances were impressive. In March 2023, the 25 litre keg were selling at N12000, but by October last year same 25 litre kegs were selling at N25000 in Lagos.

This year’s performance are projected to be far higher with the food products inflation rising at galloping rates across the country. Palm oil refined as Palm Olein is the dominant vegetable cooking oil in the Nigerian markets.

 

palm oil prices for week ending february 24:

Benin City:   N18,000.

Enugu:.         N16,000.

PH:                N22,000.

Lagos:.          N24,000.

NIGERIA NEEDS TO OVERCOME ITS WEAKNESSES TO END FOOD INFLATION

Basil Okoh. There's no shortage of food in Nigeria. But there’s a daily rise in the price of food products. The galloping inflation in food prices is mixed into a 51% unemployment rate and an unstable government to produce a sour blend of hunger and unrest in the land. 

Hands are flailing, tension is taut and tempers are reaching boiling point. Government is not showing informed knowledge and action in its responses to the raging hunger in the land. In fact, government lies to the people about grain reserves in silos spread across the country. There are no grains in any silos across Nigeria. 

 Insecurity and rising food prices in Nigeria require a multifaceted approach. At no cost to government, we propose the following fail-safe solutions. The truth however is that there are no magic propositions to alleviate hunger in the short term. Solutions require planning for the long term and faithfully implementing these plans. The Bola Tinubu government has not made any move towards solutions even on the level of policy and budgeting: 

1. Regain security control from bandits and marauders of the vast arable Savannah and the Sahel of Nigeria. Farming communities have lost control of their farmlands to bandits and no farming activities or investments can go on until these lands are regained and returned to the farmers. 

 2. Increase Agricultural Productivity: Invest in agricultural infrastructure, provide farmers with access to modern farming techniques, quality seeds, fertilizers, and irrigation systems to boost crop yields and reduce post-harvest losses. These are time worn propositions. The problem begins with the fact that there are no extension services across the breath of the country, from federal to states and local governments. So there are no institutional structures to faithfully supervise and implement government support and investments in agriculture. By experience, government investments in agriculture becomes fertile ground to corruptly enrich officials and contractors. The World Bank structured River Basins Development saga remains abiding examples of government failure in interventions in direct agricultural investments. 

 3. Diversify the Economy: Nigeria heavily relies on oil revenue, diversifying the economy will reduce its vulnerability to fluctuations in oil prices and create more employment opportunities in other sectors like agriculture, manufacturing, and services. The problem is that through excessive borrowings with pledges to pay with crude oil, Nigeria is paid forward for oil still under the ground. For the next decade, 50% of the crude to be produced and sold by Nigeria has been paid for and the money embezzled through opaque projects. 

 4. Support Smallholder Farmers: Provide financial assistance, training, and access to markets for smallholder farmers to improve their productivity and income. Again without a structured and effective extension system in place, the real Nigerian farmers cannot be identified, registered, planned for and supported. 

5. Promote Food Security Policies: Implement policies that promote food security such as strategic grain reserves, subsidies for staple foods, and price stabilization mechanisms to cushion the impact of price fluctuations on consumers. The ravaging insecurity in the middle belt, the real food basket of Nigeria, has rendered farming a death wish undertaking. The farmers have all left the farms and the unorganized youth migrated to the South to become farm hands and urban drifters. 

6. Invest in Infrastructure: Improve transportation networks, storage facilities, and market infrastructure to reduce food wastage and ensure efficient distribution of food products across the country. Nobody has had nobler intentions than the Nigeria government. But these intentions when translated into projects, have had their funds embezzled and the projects abandoned. Abandoned agricultural projects dot the skyline of Nigeria. 

7. Address Unemployment: Implement job creation programs, vocational training, and entrepreneurship support to reduce unemployment rates and alleviate poverty. 

8. Social Safety Nets: Establish and strengthen social safety nets such as food assistance programs, cash transfers, and school feeding programs to support vulnerable populations during times of economic hardship. 9. Combat Corruption: Address corruption in the food supply chain to ensure that resources are allocated efficiently and reach those in need without leakage or diversion. 

To urgently address the rising price of food products in Nigeria, the government can implement measures such as subsidizing agricultural inputs, investing in infrastructure to improve transportation and storage facilities, promoting sustainable farming practices, regulating market activities to prevent hoarding and price manipulation, and supporting smallholder farmers through access to credit and technical assistance. 

Additionally, initiatives to diversify the economy and reduce dependency on imported food items can also help stabilize prices in the long term. By implementing these measures, Nigeria can mitigate food insecurity, stabilize food prices, and promote economic development and social stability.

Stopping Jonathan From 2015

 “This New Nation called Nigeria should be an estate of our great grandfather, Uthman Dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We use the minorities in the North as willing tools, and the South, as conquered territory and never allow them to rule over us, and never allow them to have control over their future” (The Sardauna of Sokoto and the Premier of the Northern Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello in The Parrot of October 12, 1960)

G

oodluck Jonathan Is the first Nigerian to emerge president of the Federal Republic by defeating the entrenched Hausa/Fulani oligarchy in an open political contest. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, notwithstanding the fact of his birth and breeding in Zungeru in the north, spoke Hausa fluently and became the symbolic leader of the fight against British colonialism for Independence of Nigeria, could not penetrate the in-breeding Fulani oligarchy for electoral acceptance. Again, Obafemi Awolowo, who earned the plaudits of everyone for his development ideas which he put to practice even before Nigeria’s independence, did not enjoy electoral success in the Fulani dominated north.

President Goodluck Jonathan

But Goodluck Jonathan, the man of providence, portrayed by the Tinubu Press as an effete, provincial academic and politician with a boyish cluelessness, took on the deeply entrenched northern traditional and political establishment, creating a division rooted in public conscience and defeating the entrenched northern politicians Ibrahim Babangida, Adamu Ciroma, Ango Abdullahi,  Abubakar Atiku and Muhammadu Buhari in resounding electoral victories.

It is clear from the lessons to be drawn from this epochal victory that the ongoing effort to browbeat President Jonathan to submit to blackmail and surrender his constitutional right to re-election for a second term particularly from the trenchant Hausa/Fulani north and the mischievous Tinubu Press will amount to asking the victor to deny his historical accomplishment and give away what was earned by the nation through the man of providence. Freedom for Nigeria beckons from what was gained through the electoral victory of Jonathan and this freedom is what is being asked of the man to throw away by requesting him to foreclose his constitutionally guaranteed second presidential tenure. This, my compatriots is tantamount to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

The Hausa/Fulani north is as things stand today under the benign benevolence of Goodluck Jonathan for regional security and economic progress. Their elite will however not acknowledge this dependence nor will they want to take supportive actions to sustain his regime for their own good. The deeply ingrained sense of entitlement to political supremacy, patronage and economic benefit against the larger interest of all other ethnic groups in the nation has conditioned the Hausa/Fulani to become dependent, arrogant and unthinking of the need to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. For nearly forty years of their pillage of the Nigerian economy including the license to allocate other people’s resources to themselves, it never crossed their provincial minds that all era must come to an inevitable end and that the ascendancy of Jonathan signals the end of the age of ethnic supremacy and Hausa/Fulani dominance.

Ahmadu Bello

 

It is paradoxical that the Hausa/Fulani domination of Nigerian politics and economy was not based on any superior indices, either of numbers, skills, enterprise or military conquest but on a single day’s display of bravado and Dutch courage in July 1966 when the northern political establishment recovering from the January 1966 failed putsch, recruited Northern Minority soldiers to decapitate their Commander-in-Chief, General J.T.U Aguiyi Ironsi and complete an ethnic cleansing of Igbo officers in the Nigerian armed Forces. From thence onwards until Goodluck Jonathan in 2010, they sustained a succession plan which guaranteed that a Hausa/Fulani or their crony occupied the presidency of Nigeria.

Yakubu Gowon, Olusegun Obasanjo and Ernest Shonekan are the surrogates they used at different times. They needed the charm of Yakubu Gowon to win over the international community particularly the British, and the southern minorities to accomplish the routing of Biafra in the Civil War. Obasanjo was the lackey they recruited to hold down the rambunctious Yoruba and the south during the times of rebellion to their dominance. Shonekan was the failed lap dog deployed to assuage the Yoruba over the betrayal of Moshood Abiola.

In the period of dominance, the Hausa/Fulani developed a survival strategy that ensured that southern wealth was moved up North to service the gluttony of technocrats, the pageantry of northern aristocracy and for the development of Northern infrastructure. In 1969, the petroleum decree was promulgated to place the control of the burgeoning oil wealth in the hands of Northern Military officers who controlled the federal Military Government and allocated the resources according to their whims. The 1969 petroleum decree changed the economic relationship between regions in Nigeria and helped sustain even for the oil producing states, a subsisting dependence on the federal government for “allocations”, a reverse form of federalism not known anywhere else in the world.

Import licensing, a diabolical practice introduced by the Shehu Shagari Government in 1981 was enacted to subdue the business class and put the lucrative import business under the control of President Shehu Shagari and his kinsmen. Mahmoud Tukur, erstwhile Vice Chancellor of Bayero University Kano and later Minister of Trade and Commerce became the point man. He was the star of the Shagari administration, courted by the mighty and the lowly alike, not for creating value to the economy but for issuing permits to import goods of any kind into Nigeria. It is this process of pre-bended import licensing and benefits allocations that created the Hausa/Fulani champions of business and enterprise of today.

Fulani

It is public knowledge how the Hausa/Fulani also used ethnic control of federal power to leverage the commanding heights of the economy and allocate resources and benefits to their kinsmen. The allocation of 87% of all oil blocks - the underpinning reason for the dog-fight for the presidency in 2013 - in the South-South oilfields to Hausa/Fulani and Kanuri is a vexatious case in point. So also is allotment of certain federal posts to only their kinsmen, another irksome issue open for ethnic contention, particularly the headship of Customs and Excise and certain Federal Ministries and Agencies.

Boko Haram is not an unprecedented phenomenon in Northern Nigeria but a replication of the same Islamic fundamentalist revolutions and ferment that swept through the Western Sudan in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. One of these Islamic Champions was a Fulani cleric named Usuman dan Fodio who led the conquest of the Hausa Habe dynasties and the violent takeover of their empires across what was once Hausa land. It is this historical conquest of Hausaland and Oyo that make the Fulani believe that Nigeria is their conquered territory and their ethnic inheritance.

Boko Haram in Procession

Boko Haram’s present day practices are a reproduction of the overwhelming brutality that attended that conquest. Contributing least of all Ethnic Nationalities North and South of Nigeria to the national Purse, the Hausa/Fulani maintained a political and economic control far beyond their productive or military capabilities. They took covert control of the Armed Forces and maintained a glass ceiling preventing non-Hausa/Fulani officers, particularly the Igbo and southern minorities from rising to significant command positions.

For instance in August 1982,fearing the coming together of the Progressives and foreseeing the clear possibility of Shehu Shagari losing in the pending presidential election of 1983, the Hausa/Fulani establishment met in Kaduna and recommended to  Shehu Shagari the retirement of the General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the strategic 1^st Division, Kaduna and the promotion of five named Hausa/Fulani officers to Generals to forestall power falling into the hands of “infidels” in the eventuality of a coup de etat and the toppling of Shagari’s Government.

Thus Alani Akinrinade was forcefully retired and Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha, Muhammadu Jega and Garba Wushishi were promoted to Generals. A coup did happen to remove the deeply unpopular Shehu Shagari and the NPN government in December 1983 but it was a palace coup dominated by the strategically promoted officers which as planned, did not change the ethnic hold on power by the Hausa/Fulani.

An obverse side of the choices available to Goodluck Jonathan in the fight over 2015 presidential election has not been properly considered by anybody particularly the people determined to pull the entire nation down to secure the Aso Villa. What if Jonathan decides not to run for re-election and refuse to deploy the massive goodwill and resources of the presidency to support PDP, the ruling party? Can the denizens of the ruling party hope to sustain their present slippery hold on power after the 2015 elections? PDP will explode and the resulting fragments will be minority parties or junior partners in existing parties with no commanding presence or capacity to contest a presidential election.

This is the major reason the seven rebel Governors in PDP cannot move in to their pre-registered political party PDM. If the All Peoples Congress (APC) wins the Presidency by any chance, can a Bola Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar, Ango Abdullahi,  or even Adamu Ciroma live with an intemperate and bigoted Muhammadu Buhari for four years? Will the Yoruba continue to allow Yorubaland to be used by Tinubu and his Afenifere deserters to pursue an Islamisation agenda? To every right thinking Nigerian, Goodluck Jonathan holds the vital aces required to hold Nigeria together post 2015.

Why do we hold that the Far North owe a world of gratitude to Goodluck Jonathan? Because we believe to be true that If President Jonathan for mischief, want of resources or any other reason scales down the deeply sabotaged military operations against the Boko Haram in the North, the forces of darkness as represented by the Terrorists will be unleashed on the entire Far North and the Northern political, traditional and religious establishment will be overrun and replaced by persons and institutions that hold allegiance to Boko Haram under a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy. Can whatever will be left of the northern establishment live with that?

Boko Haram is a Frankenstein’s Monster created by a Northern elite implacably infuriated by the loss of power to a minority politician, never mind that Jonathans people have been supportive of the political interests of the north and are the owners of the bread basket which sustains the entire Northern Region. Now the Boko Haram monster has grown beyond the capacity of the Northern irredentists to manage and are now poised to eat up its creators and replace the establishment with its own implacable and irascible kind.

 

 

 

Goodluck Jonathan in the Presidency embodies and holds the hopes and aspirations of all previously denied and sidelined ethnic peoples in Nigeria and they watch keenly the macabre dance that is going on to seize the Aso Villa and make it a permanent abode of the Hausa/Fulani. It will be foolhardy for any group in Nigeria to make little of the determination of the Peoples of the South-South to hold on to their chance at the exercise of presidential power for the public good and the rebirth of the Nigerian nation.

Basil Okoh

 

NIGERIA: HOW WILL AGRICULTURE FARE UNDER A NORTHERN PRESIDENT?

Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, Minister of Agriculture

Minister of Agriculture Dr. Akinwumi Adesina is laying foundations and bringing new and exciting thinking into re-building Nigerian agriculture, but what happens to us when he and his principal Goodluck Jonathan leave?

Nigerian officials have historically maintained a dubious attitude to agricultural development and farmer welfare. What is said at public places do not usually reflect what is practiced as policy. Nigerian bureaucrats choose always to splash huge sums on grandiose projects with high decibels in publicity but with little or no impact on actual production and development in the sector. Farmer welfare comes last in government considerations.

Huge sums are lost, always, on overpriced contracts, the importation of useless equipment or payouts to Multilateral Agencies and Western Consultancy groups who mean no good to the development of Nigerian agriculture. We bear witness to the cesspools that the River Basin Development Authorities (RBDA) and the Agricultural Development Programme (ADP) championed by the Federal Agricultural Coordinating Unit (FACU), Ibadan, then headed by the zealous Professor Francis Idachaba and sponsored by the World Bank turned out to be, legacies of the “Integrated Development” model of Dr. Robert McNamara, president of the World Bank in the Seventies and Eighties.

Abandoned Rice Processing Plant, Omor, Anambra State.

Agricultural development was to be built around farmers in clusters surrounding the major rivers of Nigeria, the rivers themselves offering irrigation water and drainage all year round.

Fine policy that appeared to be. Trouble was that the billions of dollars offered by the World Bank in credit never got to Nigeria. A full sixty percent of the money was expended on the purchase of overpriced equipment and materials that were unsuitable for Nigerian agricultural practices and farming systems. The requirement to purchase Euro- American equipment was written into the fine prints of the contracts with the World Bank which was the first warning for failure. The balance 40% was mostly purloined by Nigerian officials.

The farm extension services personnel recruited for the projects were ill trained, unsupervised and preferred to gallivant around town with the motorbikes bought for the purpose rather than moving into farming communities as trainers of the farmers in the so-called modern practices.

Something shameful will be remembered of President of Nigeria at the time, Alhaji Shehu Shagari (1979-83) and his political Party National Party of Nigeria (NPN). They clutched at the World Bank projects like life rafts to save a failed agricultural policy. The prop slogan “Green Revolution” ended up creating a huge food deficit and a food import monopoly for party big wigs who brawled over import licenses.

The combined result of the World Bank sponsored projects and the food import license bonanza for the NPN mandarins was to effectively destroy the burgeoning growth in the agricultural sector particularly rice cultivation in Nigeria. Rice, sugar, wheat, corn, etc were labeled “scarce commodities” and put on the special import license list granted only to the NPN party moguls who went on to import these products with graft money from pre-bended contracts. A tidy monopoly was thus created for the few and the cost foisted on the rest of the Nation and its farmers. Thereafter, a dire import dependent food policy and a growing debt burden defined the national economy for the next three decades.

It must be remembered that Shehu Shagari and his NPN nurtured Nigeria’s imported rice dependency syndrome which will be near impossible for the Nigerian population to kick.

Shagari’s successors, Buhari, Babangida and Abacha all military despots and lacking imagination and patriotism and owing no obligation to Nigerians having come to Government through coups d’état, sustained Shagari’s practice of licensed food importation, creating a few billionaires in the midst of an increasingly impoverished farming population, a dangerous dependence on foreign, particularly Asian rice and now a devastated agricultural sector, lacking investment, infrastructure and a disorganized market overrun by imports from Asia.

Typical Rice Mill in Nigeria 2013.

Babangida did worse. He fashioned and implemented an ethnic economic agenda banning wheat importation (a crop not cultivated in Nigeria) to effectively put the

Flour Milling and brewing companies out of business, leading to the loss of nearly a million jobs in the milling, brewing, bakery, pastry and ancillary businesses. He then sold the entire country down the river with a dubious harmattan wheat cultivation project in Northern Nigeria paying out unbelievable sums to Hausa/Fulani contractors who after three years could not have a single bushel of wheat to show for all the tonnes of money.

Determined to crush the thriving poultry industry in Southern Nigeria, Babangida placed an absolute ban on corn and Feed imports into Nigeria, again destroying the Feed Milling industry and sending the entire poultry stock based mostly in Southern Nigeria to forced fire sales and closure.

Accusations of an ethnic agenda to destroy southern agricultural investments and force a dependency on Northern food products were mostly ignored by the Babangida Government. Neither could Babangida deny that Southern dominated poultry meat production was being forced to closure in order to open up a monopoly for Northern cow beef business.

What then will happen to southern agriculture under another northern president? Wait please for the next instalment…………….

'DO ME I DO YOU', ANOTHER KIND OF 'WAR' IN NORTH-EASTERN NIGERIA

LOCUST RITUAL

In Nigeria's far North eastern Borno State, another kind of war is on, man is biting back against the desert locust. Swarms of migrating locusts seasonally strip the semi-arid region of its scanty vegetation and crops. But Gambo Ibrahim, 27, a locust hunter, says the people of Borno have found a way of converting the desert locust's assault into an annual banquet. They eat the locusts which they call "desert shrimps".

ONE BAD TURN

"In Pidgin English, we say 'na do me i do you'," says Mr. Ibrahim, who has been hunting locusts for 8 years. I mean, yes, the locusts are eating up our crops, but we are also eating them up and making money to boot.

"So both man and locusts are losers, but i think they are worse off because we are eating them. I guess you could say one bad turn deserves another," he says with a chuckle.

HUNTING

"Since the locusts fly and man cannot fly, then if man must catch them, he has to figure out a way to engage the locusts on familiar territory - ground. "The locusts tend to fly at night because it is really cold (temperatures drop to 9 degrees Celsius) and dark. That's when we go after them.

"You need safety boots like these ones I have on, which are actually my dad's cast-off military issue and they serve the purpose well" Mr Ibrahim says.

LIGHT TRAP

"in addition to the safety boots and a minimum of three layers of clothes - jeans is the best - you also need a very powerful torch" Mr Ibrahim explains. You use it to see your way in the sahara at night. The torch is actually also a trap. "The locusts are attracted to it and they literally just come flying into your face and all you really have to do is just pick them off.

MONEY SPINNER

"We then put them in bags and head for the market. A bag of live locusts fetches between $26 and $30. Locusts are simply money spinners", Mr Ibrahim says. Most of our buyers are women who in turn dress the locusts, fry them and sell them to members of the public.

SNACK

"We buy the locusts from the boys,"says Esther Daniel who sells fried locusts in Maiduguri town. After that we remove their wings so they can't fly", she says.