The story of the droughts of 1972 and 1973 in Nigeria has been effectively told by Van Apeldoorn (1978a, 1981), and by others for West Africa. There were signs of trouble as early as 1969, but these were ignored – perhaps because of their patchy distribution – until a full-scale harvest failure occurred in 1972. Even this disaster was uneven in its impact. But by the end of that year, there was no doubt that the Dry Zone of West Africa was facing its worst food crisis for more than a generation. My purpose in this chapter is not to reproduce what has been done, on a more general level, elsewhere, but to examine some extensive data collected amongst drought-affected communities within the lifespan of the disaster (which may be considered to have ended, for the time being, with the rains of 1974).

THE DROUGHTS OF 1972 AND 1973

The droughts that occurred in 1972 and 1973 had major significance on all four of the dimensions – meteorological, hydrological, agricultural and ecological – defined in chapter 1. Expectations of rainfall, although not stated quantitatively in terms of the ‘normal’, nevertheless guide decisions made by indigenous land users. In the semi-arid zone, expectations are defined in terms of the growing possibilities for the major crops, and for pasture and browse. Beyond the northern limit of rain-fed agriculture (in the arid bioclimatic zone), only the second dimension is relevant.