<p>Climate (GCMs), hydrological (SWAT), and land use (CA-Markov) prediction models were used to evaluate the impacts of climate and land use change on the water balance of the Hadejia River Basin (HRB) Northwestern Nigeria. Arc-SWAT was used for the simulation and prediction between 1985 and2020, and the sequential uncertainty fitting approach (SUFI-2) was used for calibration and validation in the SWAT-CUP environment. The test results of the calibration and validation revealed a Nash-Sutcliffe (NS) = 0.72 and 0.63, R²= 0.74 and 0.66, and PBIAS of 17.8 and 12.2 suggesting the robustness of the model. Future simulations (2025–2045) were executed in two different stages (1st and 2nd ). The results showed a decline in average annual precipitation (23.4%), runoff (2.1%), baseflow (3.7%), streamflow (20.4%), and potential evapotranspiration (PET) (0.82%) in the first stage <i>(i.e. with no land use change)</i>. While, in the second stage <i>(i.e. with land use change)</i> surface runoff rise by 12.6% yet water yield declined by 27.2%, suggesting LULC impacts, which required attention by all relevant authorities, the fact that anthropogenic issues such LULC are controllable been totally in the hand of human kind unlike climatic problems which are largely nature driven. The present study has practical implications for future water availability for municipal supplies and irrigation farming, as well as for the potential occurrence of floods due to land use changes that exacerbate climate change and variability effects in this vulnerable area. The study suggests a multidisciplinary approach to incorporate social issues like population growth and its impact on land cover conversion, water demand, direct river water abstraction, and government policies related to river basin management. In addition, employing various hydrological models could facilitate evaluations among the different model varieties.</p>