Environmental History and the Politics of Ecological Memory in the Lake Chad Basin States of Nigeria

This dissertation provides an original environmental history and ecological memory analysis of the Lake Chad Basin states of Nigeria, encompassing Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa in the North East geopolitical zone, examining how the catastrophic shrinkage of Lake Chad since the 1960s has been historically experienced, culturally interpreted, and politically instrumentalised by affected communities and governing authorities. The Lake Chad ecological crisis, involving over 90 percent surface area loss since 1963, represents one of the most profound environmental transformations in African history, yet its historical dimensions and the politics of its cultural memory have been systematically neglected in favour of technical ecological accounts. The dissertation employs a four-year interpretive ethnographic and archival design combining participant observation in six fishing and farming communities, 80 semi-structured interviews with elders, environmental administrators, and political leaders, archival analysis of colonial ecological records and post-independence Lake Chad Basin Commission reports, and computational analysis of satellite imagery from 1972 to 2023. Environmental History Theory, the Social-Ecological Systems Framework by Ostrom, and the Ecological Memory Concept by Berkes provide the analytical anchors. The dissertation proposes the Ecological Memory-Political Mobilisation Model, which specifies how community memories of ecological abundance and loss are converted into political narratives shaping resource governance demands, conflict mobilisation, and migration decisions. Keywords: environmental history, Lake Chad, ecological memory, North East Nigeria, climate governance.