The fight against Boko Haram and, lately, criminal terrorists, so renamed after years of parading around as bandits, has really tasked our leaders on end. Sadly, our forest ecosystem is a battle ground, and it is clear that most Nigerians do not really take to heart the quality and quantity of our national forest land mass.
From north to the south, there has never been any time the country has so discussed the impact and importance of our forest cover, until the bandits so forced us to do lately. As usual, we are quick to look for an easy way out of the logjam posed by criminals, bandits and terrorists converting our our pristine forests ecosystem to their coven of operations.
The recent pronouncement by Kaduna State governor, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, that the country’s military forces should carpet-bomb the forests, dares to challenge our very poor understanding of the gift of natural resources management and conservation.
Let me at this point state Nigeria is an environmental time bomb waiting to carpet the nation and its 200 million people out of the global map. Those who know, and they are few, are worried at the massive neglect of the natural resources ecosystem, unbridled reclamation and sand-filling of waterways, destruction of mangrove forests, deforestation, oil spills, massive logging of primary and secondary rainforests, illegal hunting of fauna resources and poor waste disposal, all harbingers of the sudden death to humanity.
Again, I crave to alert that coastal states like Lagos and Rivers are in foremost danger of going under the waters within the next 10 years or less.
Don’t look too far for evidence, as the constant repairs of vibrating bridges in Lagos, coupled with massive flooding at the slightest rainfall, sends the city to shivering sleep. The recent appearance of strange dusty dark air (soot) in River State are small but very dangerous environmental disasters waiting to suffocate the nation.
Up north, even before the advent of Boko Haram, places like Yobe State were a veritable location of massive dust and sand haze due to unchecked desertification. It rained dust in Gashua endlessly.
Notably, attempts were made in the past by various Nigerian governments, particularly the military administrations, at the behest of the World Bank, World Widelife Fund and focal United Nations agencies to help check the impact of fast desertification by planting trees as shelter belts across most northern border frontiers such as Yobe, Borno, Zamfara, Sokoto, Kebbi and Taraba.
Indeed, neglect made state and local government-owned forest ecosystems collapse over time, leaving the Federal Government-managed forest covers intact.
At the advent of Boko Haram insurgence, it became glaring that our national forest ecosystems protection architecture could not stand the massive onslaught of the insurgents who initially sought refuge in Sambisa forest, which shares borders with forest ecosystems in Bauchi State.
Sambisa forest was a strategic trees shelter belt captured in the good old days of efforts to check desertification from overrunning Borno State and the Chad Basin but the state government was playing Russian roulette with its management.
Why the Bornu State government refused to heed Federal Government’s request to bring that enclave under its management through the Nigerian National Park Service, beats the imagination.
Let us look at Kaduna, where the panicky forest cover bombing initiative is coming from, and ask what el-Rufai has done with over 400 state and local government forest reserves. There is no gainsaying that such critical natural disaster interventions have all been abridged and most converted to irrelevant government dispositions or fancies.
Still standing though on one leg is the Kamuku National Park, Birnin Gwari.
At its takeover and foundation years ago, Kamuku served as holding bay for elephants from Bauchi, Yankari forest and the elephants traversed through the Kamuku enclave to Zamfara when there was drought in the area. Kamuku also holds hydrologic cycles, endemic rock formations, Fulani cultural historic homes and heritage sites, attracting high rainfall barometers and housing ecological tourism attractions.
Significant is the fact that many rangers of the National Park paid the supreme price to keep invading rogue Fulani herders out of Kamuku. At no point did Kaduna State government offer to help.
If you are a frequent road user or traveller, you would have noticed that Birnin Gwari, where Kamuku is located, is a strategic road post between Kaduna and other parts of the North and South. So, it became a national security question to police this area naturally forested down towards Plateau State, for instance.
Though the poorly armed rangers of the National Park could not do much to hold down well-armed criminal gangs, terrorists and rogue herders, we must again interrogate where criminal terrorists attacking Plateau operate from.
We have severally called on the minders of our national security architecture to initiate a solid rock formation against the insurgents operating in our protected and unprotected forest ecosystems to partner with the leadership of National Park Service to check the menace. The facts are that our military does not know the many track routes in our forests, which are known only to the rangers, who also are knowledgeable to sense and track down unwanted visitors in the forests.
These guerilla warfare strategy has over the years helped the unit parks’ leadership to track down poachers, rogue Fulani herders and other unwanted elements.
Yes, one must acknowledge the efforts of the military to train the park rangers on how to handle high-caliber armoury, yet it is sad that such sophisticated weapons are not in use by the ranger operatives of the National Parks, hence the unfortunate failings to arrest and drive insurgents out of the parks.
Sadly, we have the most brainless Ministry of Environment, which has not adequately addressed the rage and rape of our protected forest ecosystems all over the country.
That we have lost Chad Basin, Kamuku and Kainji Lake National Park to insurgents calls for a new national thinking on how to protect our flora and fauna ecosystem, not the el-Rufai carpet-bombing option.
Governor Abdullahi Ganduje, also in panic, brought in the army to turn the Felgore forest ecosystem in Kano into a shooting range. This panic stopgap measure also opened that remaining forest frontier in Kano to house herders, and one cannot but imagine the environmental impact of such quick-fix actions on natural resources conservation and management in the next few years.
On issues of nature conservation, the only sustainable solution is to pay heed to expert opinions on resources protection and conservation, getting the rural people to have strategic buy in to the agenda, after all, the land belongs to the people.
That government holds the forest and marine ecosystems in trust for people, does not in any way suggest that all decisions and efforts should be geared to satisfying quest for absolute negative over ridding and all knowing decisions or suggestions as canvassed by governor El Rufai.
On this beat, we shall evaluate President Buhari’s approval of ten new National Parks, the role of state governments, funding mechanism, the reality and import of their immediate take off and implementations vis a vis the national military campaign to rid the forests of terrorists and insurgents and the desirability to enthrone fresh thoughts in the management of protected areas across the country. Happy New year to you all. Nostradamus also loading. Watch this space.