27/05/2023
THE TOURIST: The Sambisa Forest is a forest in Borno State, northeast Nigeria. It is in the southwestern part of Chad Basin National Park, about 60km southeast of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State. It has an area of 518 km².
The Sambisa forest is located at the northeastern tip of the west Sudanian Savanna and the southern boundary of the Sahel Savannah about 60 km south east of Maiduguri, the capital of the state of Borno. It occupies parts of the states of Borno, Yobe, Gombe, Bauchi along the corridor Darazo, Jigawa, and some parts of Kano state farther north. It is administered by the Local government areas of Nigeria of Askira/Uba in the south, by Damboa in the southwest, and by Konduga and Jere in the west.
The name of the forest comes from the village of Sambisa which is on the border with Gwoza in the East. The Gwoza hills in the East have peaks of 1,300 meters above sea level and form part of the Mandara Mountains range along the Cameroon-Nigeria border. The forest is drained by seasonal streams into the Yedseram and the Ngadda Rivers.
During the colonial period, the Sambisa game reserve covered an area of 2,258 km2 (872 sq mi) in the eastern part of the forest.[10] Later reports put the size of the game reserve at 518 square kilometers, although some official documents included the Marguba Forest Reserve in the Sambisa Game Reserve.
From 1970, the reserve was used for safaris. It had a large population of leopards, lions, elephants, hyenas, that tourists could observe from cabins or safari lodges. In 1991, the government of the state of Borno incorporated this reserve into the national park of the Chad Basin. But the abandonment of its management, following the Sambisa takeover by Boko Haram insurgents in February 2013, led to the gradual disappearance of animals, lodges collapsed or were destroyed, vegetation invaded roads, and rivers dried up.
The climate is hot and semi-arid, with minimum temperatures of about 21.5 °C between December and February