Stella Ojulowo, 48, stepped out of her floating home in the early morning light, adjusting her wrapper. She paused beside a younger woman packing bowls of crayfish, scooped a handful, and popped a few into her mouth to have a taste.
As she munched the crayfish, Ms Ojulowo reflected on her life and the impact of climate change on her farming business.
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For decades, the small coastal settlement of Oroto, tucked within the Ilaje Local Government Area of Ondo State in Nigeria’s south-west, has been her home. A 40-minute boat ride from the nearest inland community, Ugbonla, Oroto was once a thriving small-scale agricultural hub, especially for women like Mrs Ojulowo. Since the early 1900s, women in the region have dominated farming, from planting and weeding to harvesting and storage. Men, by contrast, dominate fishing.
But today, rising tides and saltwater intrusion have turned a once-fertile land into barren ground.
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“Before now, I planted crops that we would harvest, eat, and still sell the rest for money,” Ms Ojulowo said. “But now, nothing nothing.” Her voice trembled as she gazed at the rotting remains of her plantain trees. “I no feel better o.”
In 2015, she recalled, a sea incursion brought a strange transformation to her modest maize farm. The ears of corn curled and yellowed, eventually drying up despite the cost of seeds, labour, and the emotional investment. Since then, much of her farmland has been swallowed by the sea. What little remains has been rendered infertile by saltwater, forcing her into fish trading to supplement the failed harvest.
Like Ms Ojulowo, many women farmers in Ilaje are struggling beneath the weight of climate change, coastal erosion, and saltwater intrusion. Vast tracts of land have become unusable, their crops withered, their futures uncertain.
For over a century, micro-farming has sustained the women and families of Ilaje, shaping not just their livelihoods but also their identity. Now, with rising sea levels and saltwater intrusion eating away at arable land, a way of life is disappearing. Women farmers, once pillars of food production in this coastal region of Ondo State, are being pushed out of their fields, forced into fish trading, facing hunger, and grappling with government neglect.
Their struggle is a snapshot of the wider climate crisis gripping Nigeria’s vulnerable coastlines.
A salty crisis
According to USAID, at least 41 million Nigerians, about 24 per cent of the population, live in areas severely threatened by climate change. Ilaje is one of them. The community borders the Atlantic Ocean, the saltiest of the world’s oceans, with surface water salinity levels ranging between 33 and 37 parts per thousand.
Yinusa Asiwaju-Bello, professor of applied geology and marine science at the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), explains that as seawater pushes further inland, it mingles with freshwater sources, devastating the ecosystem.
“The sea has been aggressive and trying to come inland and take over,” he said. One of the major devastations is the loss of agricultural productivity because “When the saltwater enters the freshwater, it kills the food crops.”
A 2019 study published on ScienceDirect describes saltwater intrusion as the inland advancement of seawater into freshwater aquifers and surface water bodies, disrupting ecosystems and agricultural productivity, particularly in coastal regions like Ilaje.
Ms Ojulowo remembers when the intrusion first became noticeable, about a decade ago. But scientific evidence shows that it started as far back as the 1980s. Her former farmlands, once filled with okra, maize, cassava, plantain, and banana, now yield only stunted growth and poor harvests.
The impact extends beyond Oroto. In Araromi Waterside, another Ilaje settlement, lush coastal scenery hides the stark reality of food insecurity and hunger.
Women at the forefront of farming and feeding
Abike Olugbuyi, a widow living near a greenish water body in Araromi, began farming 15 years ago on her mother-in-law’s land. When the sea encroached and destroyed her crops, she wept for weeks.
In response, she, like many other Ilaje women, pivoted to fishmonging.
“Now, I deal with fish processing,” she said, squatting beside a heap of freshly caught tilapia, cleaning and arranging them for smoking.
Because women traditionally manage food for their households, they are disproportionately affected by the environmental collapse.
Another farmer, 58-year-old Adenike Mesagan, said the saltwater has devastated not just their farms, but their lives, even emptied their plates as a people. “We travel all the way to Igbokoda to buy raw food,” she said. Igbokoda is a dryland town, roughly an hour’s drive from Araromi Waterside and the administrative centre of the Ilaje region.
Locals blame oil exploration for the intrusion, suspecting that drilling and extraction may be accelerating the contamination of freshwater by saltwater. This claim has been reinforced by environmentalists and researchers. Excessive groundwater extraction, climate change-related sea level rise and oil and gas exploration are the main contributing factors to the surge of saltwater, according to a 2025 study by Omorede Odigie and Nosa Obayagbona, environmental management and toxicology researchers at the University of Benin, Edo State.
‘We are hungry’
With farming on the verge of collapse, hunger is widespread in Ilaje. Mrs Olugbuyi and others claim that food prices have doubled, and access to affordable staples is severely limited.
“We’re not the ones producing the food we consume,” said Caleb Omoteinse, a retired fisherman turned small-scale farmer.
Though Araromi has a local market, most of the sellers come from outside the community. Their food items are expensive, inflated by transportation costs. A pail of garri that sells for ₦1,000 elsewhere goes for ₦2,000 in Ilaje. Likewise, a bag of sachet water, priced at ₦300 inland, costs ₦600 since there’s no sachet water production company in the region.
“We still do small-scale farming of maize and cassava. On dry land currently,” said Mr Omoteinse. “But once the sea incursion starts, it destroys everything…around every rainy June.”
The community has attempted to find solutions, but so far, none have been successful. “The problem is bigger than us,” the retired fisherman said, shaking his head.
“We are helpless.”
Ogechi Okebugwu, the programme coordinator of Small Scale Women Farmers Organisation in Nigeria, said that when agriculture declines, the locals, especially women, face increased burdens.
“Women lose the ability to feed their families, to sell produce in the local market and increase their financial dependence on men, reducing economic agency,” she noted, adding that another consequence of the farming crisis is child labour and malnutrition.
A whole existence under threat
The threat extends beyond food crops. Mr Asiwaju-Bello noted that freshwater species are dying out, unable to survive the increased salinity. Marine fish, which thrive in salty conditions, are moving closer inland, but native freshwater fish are disappearing.
A 2019 environmental study in coastal Ondo found a combined loss of nearly six per cent in fish species, decapod crustaceans, and vascular plants, due largely to saltwater intrusion.
Mrs Mesagan said there are months, between June and September, when fish simply die in the creeks. In a melancholy tone, she said, “We can’t use our water to bathe, cook, or wash our clothes.”
Ironically, although Ilaje is surrounded by water, clean drinking water is virtually unavailable. Illnesses like cholera and malaria are common, and healthcare is scarce, according to reports.
Even housing suffers. Inland, Araromi residents complain of rusting roofs. On the water, in Oroto, salt eats away at wooden bridges and the stilts holding up floating homes.
“The entire existence of the Ilaje people is under threat,” Mr Asiwaju-Bello said.
‘We are far from the government’
Residents say they feel abandoned. They had high hopes for Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa, an Ilaje man, who has now been in office for two years. But they claimed that little has changed.
“The governor just comes here for the beach,” Mr Olugbuyi said. While the state has hosted tourism events on Araromi Beach, residents complain that little has been done to address their suffering. Mr Omoteinse agreed. “We are far from the government,” he said, thumping his chest with a weathered hand.
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While Rotimi Akinsola, the senior special adviser on Agriculture and Agribusiness to Governor Aiyedatiwa, acknowledged that communities like Ilaje have long been neglected, he said the current administration is working to ensure they are now being prioritised. However, Mr Akinsola noted that addressing saltwater intrusion falls under the jurisdiction of the federal government. “It is under the Niger Delta Development…,” he said in an interview. “All we can do for our citizens is to ensure they farm in a good place, move them to where they can farm.”
In February, the state government announced that it had “concluded plans” to provide farm clusters and 1,000 hectares of land for farmers in the state, particularly those affected by coastal erosion. “We can move the farmers to dry land and give them fertilisers so they can plant,” Mr Akinsola noted, adding that the government has set up the Ondo State Empowerment Centre to train farmers on various farming strategies, including soilless farming.
However, he did not disclose how many farmers in the region have been affected. Media reports indicate that over 100 women and youths were trained in March. When asked for further clarity, Mr Akinsola simply said, “Those who come here, we give what we can. Recently, some women applied for land, and we have asked them to come for a meeting.”
Women in Ilaje who spoke with us said they were unaware of any such government initiatives.
This year, like previous years, the Ondo State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission (OSOPADEC) received a ₦33 billion budget to support social and infrastructural development in Ilaje and Ese-Odo. Yet residents who spoke with us, particularly farmers, said they have seen no tangible agricultural support.
Hope in the salt?
There may yet be a way forward, if adaptation replaces resistance. Folorunsho Adetayo, associate professor of marine geophysics at FUTA, believes that if Ilaje farmers pivot to salt-tolerant crops, they might reclaim productivity.
“The salt can be a blessing, if channelled right,” he said. “Certain rice species, for example, thrive in salty environments. With proper research and education, we can help women farmers understand what will grow and how.”
He also advocated for the use of genetically modified cash crops and more climate-resilient agriculture to boost local economies and food security. But for now, hope remains pinned on divine and political intervention. “As saltwater dey kill ham, we still dey plant,” Mrs Ojulowo said, with a sigh. “The small wey survive, we go chop.”
Without urgent investment in climate-resilient infrastructure and gender-inclusive farming policies, Ilaje’s food systems and its women may be lost to the tide.
This reporting was completed with the support of the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID)
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