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Trees are the lungs
of the earth; it can be assumed then Nigeria, which displays severe
cases of deforestation, is literally gasping for breath for lack of
oxygen. That Nigeria’s rainforests have been depleted to less than 10
percent of its size 50 years ago is not news.

What is left of our
forests are under threat, and many areas are degraded and converted for
other uses. This phenomenon is not restricted to Nigeria. Overall, the
United Nations surmises that 13 million hectares of forested land have
been converted every year over the past 10 years and most of this is
said to be for agricultural purposes.

In areas like the
Amazonia, most of the conversion has been for monoculture farms where
crops like soy are cultivated for animal feed and other industrial
uses. In South East Asia, the threat has been from forest conversion
into oil palm plantations for ultimate production of fuels for
machines. Indeed, the land uptake and the highly invasive oil palm
trees, make this writer wince whenever Latino friends insist on calling
the tree ‘palm Africano’ or ‘African palm’. A crop, whose origin is
Africa, is being introduced in environments where the locals view its
arrival with anxiety and at times anger.

In Nigeria, our
forests are threatened by logging for export and conversion into
plantations. It is said by some that we export logs and import back
into Nigeria as floorboards, furniture, or even toothpicks. As The
Economist noted in a recent issue, “clearing forests may enrich those
who are doing it, but over the long run it impoverishes the planet as a
whole.”

There was a
notorious forest gobbler who was well known for logging outside its
area of concession in the Omo Forest. Whenever confronted, the
operators of this company would plead that they simply got lost in the
forest. Interestingly, they always ‘innocently’ strayed into areas
where the bigger trees were.

The company’s
creative way of avoiding responsibility perhaps reached its crescendo
in the Cross River forest, after they found the Omo Forest too hot to
stay in. When community folks in Cross River began to complain about
this company’s activities, they recruited a bunch of community people
who supported the company and even staged a demonstration during which
they carried signs saying ‘we want factories, not monkeys.’ This
company was eventually kicked out of the forest by the Cross River
State government.

How about those
converting forests into rubber plantations? Chunks of the Okomu Forest
as well as the nearby Iguobazuwa forest have been at the mercies of the
Nigerian subsidiaries of a French multinational tyre company, as they
convert the forests into rubber plantations. Some people push the idea
that plantations are same as forests and that they provide same
services. Truth is that plantations are not anything near to being
forests; even the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United
Nations says otherwise. At a very fundamental level, a tree cannot make
a forest, even if you plant a million stands of that tree. The rise of
monoculture plantations have seen huge use of agrochemicals, including
pesticides that eat at the very heart of a forest ecology.

Plantations do not
have the sort of ground cover and undergrowth that forests have, and
cannot absorb as much carbon as forests do. Plantations do not provide
vegetable, medicinal, and other support to communities. Neither do they
provide the essential service of protecting watersheds as forests do.
We need not mention that bush meat is not found in plantations.

Time to ask questions

As Nigeria
celebrates 50 years of political independence, it is apt to ask if we
can easily find many 50 years old trees standing anywhere within our
borders. Some would likely be found in community-managed forests;
especially those ones designated as sacred or even evil forests.

The massive loss of
our forests cover should give us serious concern as we clink glasses in
celebrations that many Nigerians are unable to identify with because of
the sad and alienating records we have chalked up in various sectors,
including the environmental area.

As we celebrate 50
years of political independence, we may as well look back at the many
oil spills that have flooded the Niger Delta over the same period of
time. At 50, we should ask why half the population of Jigawa State
should be displaced by flooding and why water levels in dams in the
Northern parts of our country are not properly managed.

At 50 years, we
should perhaps place garlands on the necks of multinational oil
companies who had flared gas in the oil fields routinely over the same
period without care that we are daily choked and killed by the toxic
cocktail that they spew into the environment.

As we celebrate 50
years of political independence, we should track how we have fared in
all areas of human development. It is a good time to pause and ask if
50 years is not enough for Nigeria and other celebrating African
nations to pause and ask when they would have true socio-economic
independence.

As we celebrate 50
years of Independence, it is a good time to ask what are the ecological
agendas of those who wish to contest for the presidency and other
offices in Nigeria. The environment is our life, and we cannot afford
to have Honourables and Excellencies who do not care about ecology
beyond how to guzzle ecological funds and use them for electioneering
campaigns.

It should be a good time to look for a 50 years old tree anywhere it
can be found, sit on its roots, and think. If we cannot find such
tress, then we may stand before any sapling we find and promise to let
it stand for at least 50 years.