Nigeria Content Online

Massive planting of
vegetation in any country will surely contribute to mitigating global
warming. However, it is an impaired perception of reality to believe
that once planted, trees will thrive on their own, even when surrounded
by poor and landless people.

No reforestation
project in any part of Nigeria has been successful in the long term.
Naturally, I would be delighted if any state or local government in the
country could make me eat my words by producing a post-project impact
evaluation to prove the contrary.

Tree-planting
campaigns for all the huge sums tossed in that direction, have been
more symbolic than substantive in Nigeria. We have seen it time and
again (a dignitary plants a seedling in a community, then washes his
hands like Pontius Pilate and disappears in a hurry. Goats later do
justice to the plant.

Maybe our
politicians know it, but perhaps they don’t). Trees need an
environment, not only of soil nutrients and good weather to grow, but
also of economic opportunities for people that live in the vicinity. I
often look at the drainage map of Nigeria, and wonder why vegetation
growth should be a problem. Even the supposedly semi-arid North is
blessed with enough rivers, lakes and wetlands to drive agriculture and
other livelihoods. Sadly, it appears the pre-occupation of politicians
in that part of the world is the search for oil in the Chad basin.

If trees provide
vital ecosystem services such as: Carbon sequestration and regulation
of climate to all humankind, why is it always the poor that are called
upon to do the planting? Do the rich breathe other gases? When will we
see a reversal or merging of roles (the rich planting trees, and the
poor constructing houses to live in)? What happened to that radio and
TV jingle: housing for all by the year 2000, that we all believed in
during the 1990s? Ten years into the millennium, and many Nigerians
still have nowhere to sleep. Out of curiosity it would not be a bad
idea to know how many Nigerians own a house, or can afford to pay for
rented accommodation, and what percentage of the adult population that
is.

But what does a
tree mean to a Nigerian? Once a plant is not a so-called “cash” or
“food” crop, or used as medicine, it is easily converted into firewood,
or simply destroyed for fear that “useless” thickets could harbour
snakes and scorpions, rodents and insects or assist destructive locust
and quelea birds.

Some ancient groves
in the south of our country are either left intact or destroyed out of
fear that “evil spirits” could be lurking in them. Why must spirits be
evil in much of our mythology? With so much crime in Nigerian cities,
it makes one wonder why these “evil spirits” have not migrated to urban
centres from rural forests.

The north of
Nigeria by contrast is facing a serious crisis of vegetation loss, and
the more I drive around this portion of our country the more I think I
have strayed into the Sahara desert. In the absence of trees, the sun
is practically baking humans in their huts, and drying out soil
moisture outside, leaving a dust bowl of disease that the winds
circulate at a rapid rate in the atmosphere. So much dehydration is the
result, and doctors here are reporting more and more cases of kidney
stones incidence.

You would not wish your worst enemy to suffer from the pain of kidney stones!