Presentation short abstract

This paper explores how the Bakolori Dam project in Sokoto State, Nigeria, illustrates the silencing of local knowledge in technocratic sustainability efforts. It reveals how expert-led “green” interventions marginalize community wisdom and reproduce social and environmental inequalities.

Presentation long abstract

This paper examines the tensions between technocratic approaches to sustainability and the marginalization of local knowledge through the case of the Bakolori Dam project in Sokoto State, Nigeria. Conceived in the late 1970s as a modern irrigation and development initiative, the Bakolori Dam was designed to enhance agricultural productivity and promote rural transformation. However, the project’s implementation largely ignored the ecological wisdom and traditional practices of local farming communities who had long adapted to the region’s seasonal flooding cycles. The dam’s construction disrupted these systems, leading to displacement, reduced soil fertility, and social unrest. Drawing on political ecology, this study interrogates how state-led “green” interventions, framed as sustainable modernization, can silence the very voices they claim to empower. It explores how knowledge hierarchies, privileging engineering expertise over indigenous experience produce environmental and social inequities. Using historical accounts, community testimonies, and secondary data, the paper reveals how technocratic sustainability often masks power dynamics that exclude local agency. Ultimately, it argues for the recognition of local ecological knowledge as a vital component of truly inclusive and just environmental governance, highlighting the Bakolori Dam as a cautionary example of how “green” development can reproduce old patterns of marginalization under the guise of progress.