Volume 2, Issue 4, July - December, 2025

A Comprehensive Review of Climate Change Catastrophy on Food Security with Groundwater abstraction and Drip Irrigation System as Viable Mitigation Measures: A Case Study of the 12 River Basins, Nigeria

Ibrahim OI^1♦, Abubakar SM², Abdullah MA³, Davis O⁴, Ojo OO⁵, Eze CI⁶

¹Design and Hydrogeology Units, Lower Niger River Basin Development Authority, Ilorin, Kwara state, Nigeria
²Head of Water Supply, Sanitation and Climate Change, Sokoto- Rima River Basin Development Authority, Sokoto state, Nigeria
³Deputy Director, Head of Drilling unit, Chad River Basin Development Authority, Maiduguri, Borno state, Nigeria
⁴Engineering Department, Cross River Basin Development Authority, Calabar, Nigeria
⁵Hydrology Department, Ogun-Oshun River Basin Development Authority, Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria
⁶Hydrogeology Department, Anambra-Imo River Basin Development Authority, Owerri, Imo state, Nigeria

^♦Corresponding Author
Ibrahim OI, Design and Hydrogeology Units, Lower Niger River Basin Development Authority, Ilorin, Kwara state, Nigeria

ABSTRACT

Changing climate has drastically made the environment prone to uncertainty. This has further made man’s habitation on earth to be non-conducive with earth temperature that keeps rising unpredictably and uncontrollably. The study delves into solutions to ameliorate this Pandemic with the adoption of groundwater exploitation and drip Irrigation Engineering technique as mitigative approach to reduce the impacts on food insecurity in Nigeria. The study was also corroborated by findings from 12 River Basin Development areas expected to respond swiftly to the changes. The specific problem has been largely traced to high (87%) dependence on surface water and rainfall agricultural system which has been with much more limited, unsustainable and unpredictable in volume with destructive tendencies to farmlands and other valuable properties. However, groundwater potential has been largely untapped for the purpose of irrigation, just as drip irrigation has shown to be much more effective for food security. The study has thus reviewed published articles and come to a common point that Nigeria will need shift to harnessing its groundwater potential for irrigation, especially during the dry season. The Alluvium is the largest untapped mapped aquifer system of 26% country’s area, Basalt (14.12%), Banded Gneissic Complex (12.09%), Sandstone (23.21%), Shale (7.11%), Gneiss (4.08%), Schist (3.33%), Granite (3.18%), Charnockite (3.41%), Limestone (2.54%), Quartzite (1.48%) and Laterite (2.29%) systems. Water production capacity ranges between 0.98 to 5.1 liters/second in these aquifers across the River basins and Nigerian states. The study thus concludes that viable mitigation measures to reduce the impacts of climate change and enhance food security is to adopt climate resilient, smart-groundwater productivity and drip irrigation system.

Keywords: Groundwater, Alluvium, Basalt, Limestone, Aquifer system and Banded Gneissic Complex

Discovery Nature, 2025, 2(4), e9dn3127

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.54905/disssi.v2i4.e9dn3127

Published: 18 September 2025