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The main purpose of this paper is to evaluate current government policies in combating desertification and mitigating the effects of drought. This paper discusses the menace of desertification, the extent and the impact of drought in Nigeria.

The research reported in this paper was undertaken through review of existing literature, personal observations and interview with some of the residents in the affected areas as well as government officials in charge of programs in combating desertification.

The paper observes that the failure of current government policies include among others the top‐down approach, inconsistencies of government policies, neglect of indigenous knowledge, use of inappropriate technology, sectoral approach, inadequate funding, and inadequate awareness. Having identified the causes of the problem, this paper proposes that the national policy for drought and desertification should ensure sustainable development based on proper management of human‐environment interactions in the affected areas.

The evaluation method performed in this paper allows us to analyze the factors responsible for the failure of government policies in combating desertification in Nigeria. This paper suggests that a number of complementary policies, strategies and management approaches be put in place and such must take cognizance of the existing institutional settings and professional groupings as well as the complex historical, social, cultural, and legal considerations.

The paper provides a rational, holistic, practicable and comprehensive approach for finding solutions to the problems of drought and desertification in Nigeria.

What I want to do in this article is to capture the sense of community, of love, of learning, of struggle, of despair, that occurred during a weekend of laboratory training. I am conscious that this task has been attempted many times before, and not always with great success, but for some reason I cannot articulate, I need to try for myself. The incidents I wish to recount took place during a lab held for the first year group of the PhD program in Organisation Behaviour at Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, Ohio. This group had been together for about four weeks. It is important to place this lab in the context of the department's strong concern for creating a community in which the all‐round professional growth of its members could take place; thus one of the objectives of the weekend was to experiment with different ways of relating with each other and develop the kind of community relationships we thought would be most useful over the next three years. Another context of the weekend was that it was held as part of a class titled Personality Theories and Development Processes. Don Wolfe, who takes this class, and who was our trainer for the lab, is concerned that we should learn about personality and growth, both intellectually and through experience, so as to be in a position to develop our own personally meaningful theories as we experience our own processes of growth. Thus another objective of the lab was that it should facilitate our growth as people; it was to be oriented towards PERSONAL GROWTH.