Recognition of the interaction of social with natural environmental factors in the genesis of famine is not new. For example, three early studies dedicated to major continental areas emphasised the effects of political and administrative factors in compounding those of drought. In India (Dutt, 1900) it was land taxation, in China (Mallory, 1926) it was administrative breakdown, and in Russia (Fisher, 1927) it was government food levies. In West Africa, historical research is uncovering similar complexity (Cissoko, 1968; Fuglestad, 1974, 1983; Salifou, 1975; Baier, 1980). The dry African savannas have been prone to famine both north and south of the Equator (Renner, 1926; Brooke, 1967; Maddox, 1986). Quite early in the colonial period, this susceptibility was linked to the process of desertification which, under various names, had been alleged by many observers. Huntingdon's (1915) ideas on the effects of climatic change on civilisations had a pervasive influence (Grove, 1977b), but most field studies in Africa were more willing to recognise a multiplicity of social and environmental factors behind ecological degradation. Neither can the droughts of the last two decades be isolated from the kaleidoscopic patterns of social and economic change that were occurring, and in particular (as far as Nigeria was concerned) from the oil boom, which was at its height in the seventies. The distortions brought about by the oil revenues depressed agriculture and increased social and spatial inequality (Collier, 1983; Zartman, 1984; Watts, 1987).