BICHI, Nigeria -- As a crippling famine grips Southeastern Africa, threatening millions of lives, more than 2,000 miles (3,200km) away in another arid strip of the continent, Nigerian farmers are praying for rain.

Experts say it is premature for the people of northern Nigeria's dusty Savannah to worry about the late arrival of the annual rains, which is not linked to the drought further south.

But as they seek out the shade of neem trees and sit sweating and parched, waiting for the rains to fall, farmers listen to radio reports of the crisis gripping the south. And they worry.

"Rain should have started two months ago, but it is still sunny, dry and dusty," says Dahiru Salisu, a 37-year-old farmer from Bichi, a tiny village 33 miles (50 kilometers) north of Kano.

"We are afraid that the drought they have in East Africa may extend here," he says, as he cools his bare torso with a fan and tunes in his radio to pick up the catastrophic news from Zambia and Malawi.

Dahiru's concern has become a key theme in the pulpits of the north, as Muslims and Christians alike pray for the rains which last year began in March but this year remain frighteningly elusive.

"We should fervently pray for rain and a good harvest, given the delay in rainfall and what is happening in East Africa," Nigeria's best-known traditional Muslim ruler, Muhammad Maccido, Sultan of Sokoto, told believers at the weekend.

Muhammad Uthman, an imam in Kano told AFP: "The best way to have a good rainy season is to engage in prayers and repentance." His call was backed by Christian preachers.

"Whatever calamity befalls a man, he should turn to god for succour because he is in charge of all things," said Gabriel Ojo, the overseer of Kano's Baptist church.

"That is why we hold prayer sessions and seek God's mercy in sending down rain, because the situation is frightening," he added.

But while the advice of the men of the cloth is to pray for God's mercy, scientists prescribe patience.

Raja Singh, an Indian expatriate who works for the international institute of tropical agriculture in Kano, said that in 12 years the rains have been delayed this long three times without calamity.

"The rainy season in the Kano belt is not fixed," he explains.

"Its start fluctuates between march and june. even if rain is delayed until june 10, there should be no cause for alarm." "What is important now is for farmers to be prepared for the season despite the delay," he said.

Nigeria's northern belt, home to more than 40 million people, is a vast stretch of Savannah, where the Arid Sahel semi-desert is encroaching slowly and relentlessly into farmland.

President Olusegun Obasanjo recently described desertification as the number one danger facing the region.