‘Our national parks are in a terrible state’

Conservationist and development communication specialist, Paddy Ezeala, was a press officer in the Nigeria National Park Service and a Senior Manager, Media and Public Affairs of the Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF), he speaks on the state of National Parks in the country and the way forward

How would you describe the state of national parks in the country?

If you consider the reasons why national parks were created and why countries all over the world have national parks, those are special areas where aspects of the country are considered very important and deserving of preservation for posterity. They also include important monuments. National parks are very serious establishments and are held sacrosanct. They are not places to go and play or perturb the environment. Nigeria national parks were established on these same foundations. 

Most of the places we call national parks today were already existing as forest reserves since the colonial days and later became state forest reserves. They were well-protected. That is why they survived until they became national parks.

People come to find out solutions that are hidden. Even foreigners come to find out what we have that they do not have. 

Unfortunately, the national parks are in a terrible state.  The parks are witnessing various forms of degradation. They cannot be said to be serving the purpose for which they were set up as the loss of biodiversity has continued and tourism development is without a well-articulated strategy, half-hearted and ineffectual. Tourism revenue has therefore been appallingly low and unaccounted for.

The management of the national park service as presently constituted and over the years has proved incapable of protecting the natural resources within the confines of the national parks. 

They have also failed abysmally to present the true position of things to the Federal Government and thereby denying the institution the serious attention it deserves. You should also note that there are no serious linkages and collaboration between educational and research institutions in the country and our national parks. How do we then interrogate our environment and instigate development-inducing findings. 

We have rare species of plants and animals with some of them endemic to Nigeria. We neither make effort to understand what we have nor protect them.  

How best can we revive the national parks?

I would not recommend the importation of models from other countries. Park management strategy must take into cognizance the peculiarities of the country.  For instance, in developed countries, they do not eat bush meat nor roam in the forests looking for subsistence or even timber. 

The US Park Police trains park officials on awareness of suspicious activities. In South Africa, The South African National Defence Force is involved in the protection of rhinos in Kruger National Park.  

All I am saying is that management and protection of our national parks must be brought under the security architecture of the country. You cannot militarize a national park but you must strike a balance. That Nigerian national parks have 10 old double barrelled guns and machetes to protect thousands of square kilometres of forests is laughable. Even illegal loggers now carry guns while cutting timber in Cross River State. Many park rangers have died in Nigerian National Parks in the hands of poachers and bandits.

Why can’t we have a development programme for communities in and around our national parks since they are forbidden from living off the parks. The people have survived for centuries through their interaction with the forests. Our mind-set towards park management must change.

There should be some measure of collaboration with pharmaceutical companies and knowledge-seeking natural healthcare providers.

Conservation and/national park management must be an integral part of our development narrative.

What should be done to ensure that national parks contribute to the economy of the country? 

National parks can contribute in many ways to economic development. Tourism is big business that raises huge funds especially when there is peace and political stability. Tourism is better promoted and run by professionals. You must have people who are knowledgeable enough within the parks that will link up with people who are also knowledgeable in and outside the country. We cannot privatise national parks. They are national heritage. You cannot give thousands of plant and animal species in national parks, including forested land mass approximating 1% of Nigeria’s territory to individuals in the name of privatization or economic development.  

You had mentioned that national parks, by their porosity, constitute a serious threat to national security; could you explain further on this? 

If you have national parks you must know what is inside. Where we have less than 100 park rangers with five Dane guns and 20 machetes to guard a national park, we are not serious. Let’s accept that. It poses grave danger because four out of our five national parks are contiguous with equally rich and diverse forests and parks in neighbouring countries.  The military will tell you the difficulty in handling situations in such areas. Our national parks today are harbouring all kinds of people and security agencies are finding it difficult to track them down. We must make sure that national parks are under constant surveillance. We must have adequate number of well-trained park rangers mixed with professional security men. There is a nexus between hard-to-handle insurgency or rebellion and very large thick forests. 

What we call insurgency today; there has been pockets of them in around the parks for years and park rangers has been sighting them sacking villages and people and running back into the forest. If we protect every part of the parks and know what is happening everywhere, this kind of things won’t be happening.

You said Nigeria’s national parks are a huge joke, and mere corridors for possible invasion of the country, how best can this be addressed?

They are a huge joke. There is no aspect of park management that we can score 20%. In all the departments they have failed. But what people should be concerned about now is that it is not a joke for you to laugh at. It is a joke that has very terrible consequences.