Desert swan song

The chairman and chief executive of Costain West Africa plc has driven from Nigeria to the UK to raise international awareness to the environmental consequences of desert encroachment.

For Chief Newton Jibunoh, who has worked for Costain for 30 years and often visits its UK headquarters on business trips, it was the second time he had made the 6,500km car journey across two continents alone.

The difference was that this time he was aged 62 and his cause was entirely selfless.

In 1965, after completing his studies in England, Chief Newton decided to return home to Lagos, not by air or sea like as most Nigerians would choose to do, but instead by road.

"It was a dangerous choice because it meant travelling through the Sahara Desert," said Chief Newton. "But as a young man of 28, full of life and spirit, to me the option was full of adventure and well worth taking."

The two-month expedition was a harrowing but enriching experience for the Chief who for the first time came face-to-face with the stark realities of Sahara Desert existence.

Since then he has kept up a keen interest in desert encroachment and related environmental issues.

And on the verge of retirement from Costain this year the Chief, a member of the FADE (Fight Against Desert Encroachment) action group, chose to make a return trip across the Sahara to raise international awareness to the plight of his own and neighbouring countries.

This he did in five weeks, stopping in each country and attending receptions at the Nigerian embassies in Spain, France and the UK to bring his cause to the attention of the governments and national media.

As a result of his trip which ended at his English home in Totteridge on March 12, he hopes to inspire action from world bodies who can help stem and eventually stop further desertification by investment in planting new versatile vegetation around its edges — a measure which has been successfully applied already in Israel.

Every year Nigeria loses up to 350,000 hectares of forest and natural vegetation to the sand dunes.

But his homeland is not the only country to be affected. The Sahara desert is 5,000km across and up to 650 million Africans could suffer from the environmental and social consequences of this natural phenomenon should it be allowed to continue unheeded.

"The situation calls for urgent action," said the Chief, who believes steps must be taken now in preparation for a major drought and famine which have been predicted within the next five years.

"Unfortunately there seems to be little or no global or even local awareness of the time bomb that the Sahara Desert environmental catastrophe represents."

Without the health and energy of his early years, the Chief felt vulnerable and isolated in the harsh desert environment where temperatures ranged from 0C at night to 150C during the day.

Gangs of bandits, driven in recent years out of their towns and villages by the sand and now making money out of robbing travellers as they pass through the Sahara, let him live only because he was able to explain why he was there.

And when 140km per hour winds blew his four-wheel drive off track and into the dunes, he had to dig himself out of the driver's seat to escape.

"I was afraid and on many occasions thought I would die," he said. "Spending so much time on your own in such harsh situations makes you realise that there is a fine line between sanity and insanity. I even found myself talking to the car — telling it not to fail me.

"But at times like these I remembered all the people who were praying for me and relying on me to help them. I knew that I was prepared to give up my family, my joy, my comforts and my life to do that."