Goni: We Have Done Very Well Despite Our Challenges

Dr. Ibrahim Musa Goni, the Conservator-General of the National Park Service of Nigeria talks about the state of conservation in Nigeria what his administration is doing.

We are here to discuss the Nigerian environment; the conservation issues in Nigeria, especially as it relates to Nigeria’s National Parks. Please, could you assess the level of environmental conservation in Nigeria?

Thank you very much for this question. I would say that you asked about what is happening to the Nigerian environment. The Nigerian environment, as it is today, is not encouraging. The situation is sad, I must say. The world is currently faced with climate change, population increases and the increasing demand for resources. Nigeria is fast losing its vegetation covers. Between 1981 and the year 2000, Nigeria lost 3.7 million hectares of forest. This is frightening. As it stands today, it is only less than 4% of the country’s untouched forest cover that is left. More frightening is the fact that the loss has continued unabated at the rate of 3.5% annually. It should be noted that 1.5 million trees are felled every day due to logging. This means a colossal loss of biodiversity. With this scenario, you can see that the situation is really bad. At the same time, the government is not losing sight of what is happening, because policies are being rolled out, with due implementation. The National Forest Policy has been reviewed. The CITES Act (The Endangered Species Act) has just been reviewed. That National Park Service Act is also under review. Agencies are being galvanized to synergize all their efforts towards mitigating and if possible, reversing the devastation. With regard to Climate Change, the President has signed the Paris Agreement and is mobilizing Nigerian youths towards planting a minimum of 25 million trees. Under the agreement, the country is looking towards 2030 to migrate from the sources of energy we currently have to a cleaner and cheaper green energy, using the solar power. We have a vast intensity of solar power to achieve this goal.

When you talked about CITES, did you refer to the initial global convention that gave rise to the initial Decree 11?

Yes, the Decree 11 of 1985 had been reviewed and signed by the President. That was an appendage of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). It has brought about the seizure of so many endangered species of wildlife from traffickers and hunters. Remember the recent seizure of containers by the Nigerian Customs.

We will return in a moment to International Wildlife Trade. The National Park Service has been in existence, officially for 30 years. It was in 1991 the initial decree designating the National Parks came about. It was with six original National Parks, under Decree 36 of 1991. How can you assess the performance of this establishment?

Of the frightening situation of having only 4% of original forest cover left, 3.7% percent constitutes the National Parks. This alone is enough reason to say that we have done well. We do have our challenges and there is no management without its challenges. Climate change is implicated in some of the challenges bedeviling the country, such as banditry, kidnapping, overgrazing, cattle rustling etc., and they also affect us. Another is the general global downturn of events which has shrunk available resources. This has led to crisis in most economies of the world. Budgets are being affected and you know that the National Parks depend on government’s budgets. Certainly, we are also challenged, in the terms of needed resources to carry out our duties; to acquire modern technological equipment and the needed personnel to adequately perform our duties.

We hope things will start working again. Apart from the protection of the designated areas, floral and faunal resources and other structures of the National Parks, they are not meant to be just there contributing nothing to national economy. There are supposed to be scenic areas to contribute to tourism development in the country. How well have you done in this regard?

We have done well, I would say. Tourism development is not a one-institution affair. Lots of stakeholders are needed to push it forward. For instance, the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing is needed because infrastructures have to be developed. The road, water, air and rail transportation have to be working. Thank God that the President Buhari’s government is trying hard to fix these. Then you also need a competent coordinator to manage the tourism business, including the sites. That has to do with the Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation (NTDC), whose duty it is to package these resources and sell it. NTDC has the duty to organize the services of tour operators, travelling agencies, hotels and recreations to make it work. That is why I said it is cross-sectoral.

There is also an aspect which cannot be ignored. If there is insecurity in the country, does tourism flourish?

That is why I said we constantly synergise with the stakeholders. The security aspect is very important and that is why we have to work with the Nigerian Army, the Police Force, Security and Civil Defence Corps and the Directorate of State Services, in order to give the necessary security cover for tourism to thrive. That is why I proudly say that even though our forests are becoming the dens of kidnappers and bandits, with the needed synergy we can overcome them.

Another important aspect of conservation is environmental education. How well have you done in this regard?

You are part of the development, especially as your magazine is named Development Agenda. It has to set the critical agenda for development. You are already doing the needful. For that I will congratulate you, once more, for setting up the magazine and bringing it to our domain. So far, we have 334 registered conservation clubs in schools through which we propagate environmental education. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF), has helped train our conservation educators with at least two trainings already held in Oyo and Cross River National Parks. We also embark on a lot of media activities to educate the general public on the need for environmental conservation.

International support for the protection of National Parks has dwindled over time. Are there efforts by you to get the needed external support from genuine development and donor agencies?

Indeed, there are concerted efforts to get support from local and international agencies. NCF is a major supporter that we partner in this regard and it has brought lots of support to us. Currently, NCF supports our anti-poaching activities at the Gashaka-Gumpti and Kainji Lake National Parks. They secured a 99 million Pounds funding for us from Biodiversity and Protected Area Management (BIOPAMA) currently working in the Okomu National Park. That is not a small thing. We have also been able to go into collaboration with African Nature Investors (ANI). Initially, they gave us equipment worth N96 million and just recently donated working equipment of tractors, water bowsers and others worth N76 million. Don’t forget that when we started newly the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the European Union (EU), helped to establish the Cross River National Park. They gave logistic and infrastructure support. Some of these though now old are still there. Currently, EU has approved the holding of an elephant initiative programme through the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). It involves bringing together people from the various states, particularly the areas that have elephant sites. This is intended to restore elephant population in the country. Through the EU also, WCS has gotten for us additional support for gorilla conservation by donating equipment and training the rangers of Cross River National Park. The rangers are now able to intensify regular patrol and ward off poachers. However, we still need more support for conservation in Nigeria.

The Support Zone Development Programme actually started from the Cross River National Park. It was a programme designed for communities around the Park to prevent them from exerting pressure on the Park’s resources. Do you still have such programmes?

The Support Zone Development Programme is still in place. It is designed to support the communities surrounding the park. Like you have said, these are people who have depended on the forest and one day an announcement is made for them to stop depending on the forest. That era of preservation has passed and now we are conserving. And there should be a sustainable use. Conservation is for the people and not for the animals. Animals and the plants are conserved for the people. If you know about the bush mango in Cross River National Park, we have organized the women into groups, who at particular times go in and do their harvest. They are taught to harvest and there is regeneration afterwards. We have a similar package with an organization called Fifth Harvest in Kainji Lake National Park. They teach the women how to harvest the fruits of shear butter and process into oil and some other products that are packaged for sale. As long as you don’t cut the shear butter tree and retain them, by the next and successive years they are harvested and huge gains are made. That’s where we are for now. The programme would return to its former scale whenever we receive the necessary support.

Our research finding shows that trading in shear butter, bush mangoes and the other non-timber produce are more lucrative locally than trading in extracted timber. Are there no ways to increase their production in order to enrich the locals who are the main forest resource users?

Women, who are mostly the end producers of the non-timber forest produce, bring them in bags and they are paid instantly in kilograms and other weight measures. If you go to New Bussa, by Kainji Lake National Park, there is a shear butter mill, like the Kano groundnut mill. We guide the women about and how to make better incomes from shear butter and other forest products we have identified.

Have you drawn the Federal Government’s attention to the poverty alleviation progamme and how it can promote this important income generating activity?

This is an initiative that was supported by the Federal Ministry of Budget and National Planning. This is one of the things they see in our budget when we do bilateral discussion, especially about how we can provide alternative income generation for the locals of our Parks’ Support Zone Communities.

Four of the existing old National Parks are located on the borders with some countries as they have adjoining or contiguous forest lands, despite the boundary demarcations. For there to be effective protection, should there not be synergy between the countries?

Indeed, the Cross River, Gashaka-Gumpti, Chad Basin and Kainji Lake National Parks are the ones you are talking about. The synergy is what is called trans-boundary collaboration. Long ago it started in the Cross River. But on the realization that there are three other old national parks, with transnational contiguity, the collaboration was extended to the three as a deliberate national policy. Several bilateral meetings have been held between the countries in strengthening the collaboration. For instance, one of my officers, just returned from Cameroon, in connection with the collaborative meeting, which mostly hinges on international trade exchange. Based on this, the Federal Government directed that there should be a synergy between Nigeria and Cameroun. We have drawn a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), that is being processed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Cameroon has finalized its draft and sent it to us for reference and harmonization. The collaboration or MOU provides for forest rangers of both countries, who may cross the bounders without having to request for visas or permits. When a crime-suspect escapes from Nigeria to the other side, he could be extradited with minimal diplomatic protocol and vice versa. It will also help to curb poaching, wildlife smuggling and other crimes around the borders. If you remember the celebrated arrest of the container of snake that was trafficked from Cameroun, in 2020 or thereabouts, you would know what I mean. Even though the MOU is not in place and a collaboration not officially introduced, a simple understanding of situations between both countries made Nigeria to send the container back to Cameroon.

Vast forested areas, when not adequately manned, could pose very serious security threats to a country. What has the National Park Service done to contribute its quota to national security?

The forest management system in the country comes in different levels. There are the forest reserves, the game reserves and the National Parks. The forest reserves and game reserves are in the concurrent list; meaning that they are under the authority of states and local governments. This is as specified in the Land Use Act. National Parks are federal estates manned by the Federal Government. That is why there is that dichotomy. As you said, they are to a large extent ungoverned and therefore vulnerable. These ungoverned forests, may be adjacent to National Parks, but we are not mandated to protect them. We also have 414 or 415 grazing reserves in the country that have been abandoned. They have turned into forests, while some have turned to highways, estates and plantations etc. Where they are abandoned, they become hideout for criminals and black-spots for crimes to thrive. And once you have a National Park in-between it is expected that that National Park would become vulnerable. In this kind of scenario, you need the synergy with the states and local governments. Apart from collaborating with these tiers of government, we also work with the various security agencies. They have superior firepower.

You may have read in the immediate past edition of our magazine that Nigeria has turned into a hub of wildlife trafficking. How do we overcome this?

It is most unfortunate that environmental laws have not been strictly enforced in this country. The porosity of our borders is also creating problems. We suddenly have found ourselves in the middle of a trade which commodities are mostly not of Nigerian origin. It is heartwarming that the Federal Government is taking drastic measures to curb the situation. This is evidenced in the recent seizure of large quantities wildlife trophies and other products worth billions of Naira by the Nigerian Customs Service. From what I am seeing, I can tell you that from now onwards there wouldn’t be a hiding place for wildlife traffickers in Nigeria. I am happy to tell you that the government of the day has swung into action. The Customs, the Agriculture and Quarantine Services, NESREA and others are on their toes. As I speak to you, our officers have gone to Katsina, to bring back 117 endangered parrots that were trafficked from Niger Republic to Nigeria. This is worrisome. This is what I kept saying about the need for awareness generation. This is why some people say I am too hard when I say government should have declared it a taboo for people to consume bush meat hunted from the wild. If you need bush meat you have to cultivate them. And they don’t have to be endangered species protected by law.

Now what about the trees? Shouldn’t people cultivate them to replenish the ones felled?

Exactly the same thing! The Forestry Research of Nigeria (FRIN) is there setting the good example in tree planting and promoting forest regeneration. FRIN organizes timber associations and individuals to own lands for tree regeneration. Once the trees are planted, they are again harvested within five to ten years depending on the nature of the trees. We do not plant trees any longer and yet we cut them down at will.