Until insurgents and terrorists turned our flags in protected areas in Nigeria from Green, White, Green to absolutely bloody Red, signifying a forceful change of ownership and leadership, our forest ecosystems were hardly in the news.
Indeed the quietness and silence on environmental issues such as flora and fauna management is a global malady since man hardly, maybe of recent, concerns himself with the very dangers inherent in ignoring the signs of reprobation from nature.
But let’s leave the deeper poor sensitivity to issues egging on natural disasters and focus on the very disturbing scenarios from our national parks in recent times and for which we shall all face Armageddon if we fail to arrest the ongoing rot and systematic plundering of the remaining vistas of our forest ecosystem.
To simply audit what is happening within the organized managed forest enclaves will possibly wake us up from sleep. Going forward, the future intention to audit the system will capture the economic values of our forest covers, the choice woods, fauna elements, hydrologic cycles and benefits, pharmaceutical economy and human interventionist redistribution values, biosphere connectivity, agronomy and green tourism.
It is going to be long, lonely hours in the night, calculating how much an elephant tusk costs in the open marketplace or an iroko tree and or a polluted river through oil spills and other sundry environmental dislocation activities.
Those are my future areas of interventions but today is a physical auditing of what we should know as our national parks.
This is driven by the reality that banditry and kidnappings have totally taken over the parks and are the most lucrative business under forest cover. The combative position is that we have possibly nowhere to call a safe haven either for ecological tourism or conservation enclave, with the life of rangers threatened.
Let me start with Edo Governor, Godwin Obaseki, who took to public appeal and called on Nigerian Air Force to help provide air cover, particularly for Okomu National Park, citing illegal logging and drug cultivation in that forest enclave as reasons for military intervention. The frustrated governor also cited the use of Okomu forest cover to shield and perpetrate kidnapping, using the Okomu River as gateway.
The Edo governor, whose government has also not been forthcoming with supporting the presence and protection of the 0komu rainforest ecosystem, due to the lucrative licensing of wood exploitation that oils its budget and that of the state forest management officials, will with little or prompting turn the place to military camp if the need arises in order to help flush out criminal gangs operating therein.
Irrespective of the presence and signature of national park in 0komu, the true physical audit situation is that without the military support, bandits, illegal heavenly armed loggers and kidnappers, would over run the home of white throated monkeys in Nigeria.
At kainji lake, Niger State, the insurgents have made a home at the heart of the forest, taking over visitors lodging facilities and dare even the military to a contest. To oil their nefarious activities, particularly kidnapping, these crooks now connive with illegal loggers to exploit rare and expensive heritage tress and pristine forest resources unhindered.
There are fears that some insiders close to the dislodged Rangers are fueling the fast illegal depletion of the forest ecosystem, despite the presence of the Barracks of the army and air force, stone throw to the heart of the Park in new Bussa, Niger state.
As if that is not enough, and to which we cannot consider as news,. Chad Basin National park had ceased to exist from the very first outing of Boko Haram over nine years ago.
The bad guys sacked the entire structure of the protected environment, turned the head office in Maiduguri into a shooting range then. The park can’t be found on the map anymore.
Ghashaka Gumti National Park, cutting across Taraba and Adamawa states, though threatened, has kept a measure of presence due to support from an international vested interest. It is that bad, not talk about Brinin Gwari, Kaduna-based Kamuku Park, a worrisome horror ground taken over by unrelenting banditry activities.
Like we pointed out last week, Nigeria’s not too recent intention and approval of additional 10 national parks is stoking to pin down a silt ravenous serpent through the head.
Apart from the lack of national spread of said action plan, many concerned observers of national park system believe the current leadership should give way for a new effort in bringing the system out of the present administrative and operational logjam.
There is currently a graveyard silence within organized conservation NGOs, among officials of Ministry of Environment and retired conservation experts, about the continued budgeting and release of funds to these “ non-active parks” in the past five years or more.
Though their staff were audited and transferred to existing parks, however the financial auditing were alleged to be far from meeting proper scrutiny.
Though the additional ten Parks may wait in the cooler for a long time due to the unfavorable body language of most state governments , fueled by the criminal nonsensical associated with the address of the existing and troubled Parks, the burden of carrying the excessive luggage of conservation are of deep pain.
Cross River, kainji lake and Old Oyo have been on the radar of Bureau of Privatization and commercialization, for over a decade yet no deal in sight, not because these Parks are not viable green tourism destinations but largely due to government unsustainable policies on privatization.
However, it is believed by many watchers of the national park system that an open auditing of its corporate intentions, the values of the system, its management succession plans and manpower, will in a lot of ways open the system to collaborations and investment flow.
It is interesting that first five years tenure of Dr. Ibrahim Musa Goni’s administration has tipped over and well acknowledged for efforts to attend to the welfare and promotion of hardworking staff of NPS, the truth is that the Abuja head office, needs new tested brains to aggregate the desire to forge ahead with the new thinking of endorsing ten new Parks, which if not properly audited, would be another wasted effort in our national conservation expectations.
Next week, we shall look at the ten new parks, their locations, politics and what i Will call national conservation injustice. We shall also look at the five years achievement of Dr. Musa Goni, and the National Parks Act on a two terms tenure of five years each and the consequences for conservation management in Nigeria.
