Who will save Abuja's trees?

Naomi Campbell, 39, is a world class British super model. She made her name from purring and waltzing through the aisles of fashion houses in Brisbane, New York, Paris and Berlin and Milan. On a good day, Campbell would have no reason to be in Nigeria. But here was Campbell, on a sultry July 11, 2008 afternoon in Abuja, Nigeria. What was her mission? To waltz, purr and model? Sort of. On that that day, Campbell was in Abuja to add zest to a tree planting ceremony held at the Abuja National Park and Botanical Gardens. A couple of weeks before, the Abuja Market Management Limited, AMML, mobilized Abuja traders to participate in an ambitious tree planting programme. Michael Okpo, AMML managing director said that the exercise was carried out to meet the one million target set by the authorities of the Federal Capital Territory Authority, FCTA. In all, over one million trees were planted, probably sustained with the media hype that Campbell’s presence generated.

Nearly two years after, the trees are now fully grown. From the Banyans to the birches, the semi-Bo, the Cypress, the Palms and Pines, the Masquerade, the Ficus, the lush-emerald tress spread Abuja out in the everyday sun as one of the greenest cities in Africa. To the East and West, and to the North and Southern parts of the six municipal districts of Abuja, these trees are the canvas upon which the architectural painting that the city has become. In fact, officials of the FCDA who did not want to be mentioned told this reporter that every fortnight, the trees that line up the way leading to Area 11, Garki, receive special treatment. ‘We have employed fumigators to spray the trees and maintain them so that they don’t lose their shine’, the source said. Investigations by Bob MajiriOghene Communications, BMC, reporters also reveal that there seem to be a strict policy by the FCTA and FCDA that for every land allocated for the erection of any kind of building, provision must be made for at least three trees.


In 2008, when the Federal Capital Territory Administration, FCTA, increased the budget for parks and recreational facilities in the city from N100 million to one billion, it increased the number of seedlings in subsequent plantings and also appointed Theophilus Danjuma, a retired Lt-General as Chairman of Abuja Green Society. The result of these efforts is that the city is green all year round. Perhaps spurred by the successes recorded by this tree planting crusade, the Lagos state government also launched its own tree planting exercise. It did not record the kind of success like Abuja’s. In fact, most residents mocked the tree planting exercise and referred to the governor, Babatunde Fashola, as the new Guru Maharaji of Nigeria [the Maharaji is the leader of religious sect in Lagos whose temple in the outskirts of the city resembles a botanical garden].



Abuja, Nigeria’s federal capital territory, FCT, is a 7,000 square kilometer-area hewn out of four states – Niger, Nassarawa, Plateau and Kogi. Located between Latitude 9 and Longitude 7 degrees, Abuja comfortably nestles in an area known as the ‘Middle Belt’ of Nigeria. Daily, as early as 6:30am, the sun is already blazing hot, making residents grapple with temperatures as high as 84 to 90 degrees. As a result, most people within the city take refuge under the many trees in the city. At nearly every point that this reporter visited in the city, the trees provide shade for retailers to display their wares. GSM retailers, fruit vendors and second hand clothes sellers treasure and cluster under the trees. Leslie Adamou, an Abuja resident said she likes the trees for another reason. ‘Whenever, I wait for a taxi under this scorching sun, I wait under the trees instead of the bus stop because the air under the trees is generally very cool’, she said. Abuja trees also serve the interest of a lot of school children who wait under the trees until they are either picked up by their parents or wait to board a bus home.



An internet site, ISA.com says that most city trees often serve architectural and engineering functions. ‘They provide privacy and emphasize views or screen out objectionable views. They reduce glare and reflection. They direct pedestrian traffic. They provide background to and soften, complement or enhance architecture’, the site maintained. That may not be too different from what Abuja is today.
But it is in the power to regulate climate that trees are less known. At night, while everyone is asleep, trees are at work. They produce the oxygen that human beings need for their survival, after having mopped up all the sleaze from dangerous gases like carbon monoxide, Sulphur dioxide and other poisonous gases produced from our industrial and economic activities. What this does for residents of the Federal Capital City, FCC, is that they breathe fresh and crisp air, quite unlike the acrid and pungent stenches that slap residents in the face every morning in Lagos, Warri and Port Harcourt.


Yearly, cities in the southerly, westerly and easterly parts of Nigeria begin to experience the harmattan from August. But not so for Abuja. The rains continue unabated even up to November, and there are scientists who are beginning to develop theories supporting the idea that the trees in Abuja are responsible for this. They said that the leaves on the trees absorb the intense heat from the sun with which they produce food, thereby preparing a cool atmosphere necessary for the rains to set in. ISA.com says that these trees contribute to low electricity bills by companies in the city because they do not have to spend a lot of money on cooling systems for their equipment. That apart, when the rains may have subsided in other parts of the country, they continue to fall in Abuja, and this helps with the abundance of a harvest of crops like plantain, yams, and fruits like watermelons, citrus, pawpaw and beans.


Some of the trees in the city are also known to have very strong herbal and medicinal attributes. Take the case of the popular masquerade and the dongoyaro trees. Their leaves and bark form key components in local brews for the treatment of malaria fever. Though these trees are not common in the city, probably because they attract flies and litter, others like the mango line the route leading to and from the Nnamdi Azikiwe International airport.



But these trees have powerful enemies. First are the officials of the Power Holding Corporation of Nigeria, PHCN, Nigeria’s power company. Officials recently took their power saws to town and hewed a good number of them. They would have succeeded in cutting down half the trees in the city if the FCDA had not stopped them in the nick of time. PHCN officials said that they were trying to avert a ‘disaster’ because some of the trees had overgrown and entangled with many overhead power cables in the city. ‘We had to cut them down to stop them from interfering with power distribution and causing a nuisance’, a PHCN official who did not want his name published said. That is not all. The official said that they received reports that children waiting for their parents under these trees were in the habit of climbing these trees entangled in the power cables.

The FCDA was not happy with this. In a letter of protest and warning to PHCN general manager, Garki, the FCDA ordered him to suspend hewing the trees. ‘We are horrified that the PHCN took to felling trees that took a lot of money and years of painstaking effort to nurture. What we thought they could have done is notify us if they had any problem with the trees. Then we would have gone ahead to supervise the systematic pruning of these trees’, a senior FCDA official said.


Even though Abuja residents go about their normal businesses in the city, this incident is already raising questions concerning the genuineness of the claims made by the PHCN. In Nigeria as a whole, power generation is still low. Residents for the most part do not have power for upwards of 18 hours daily. If this were to be contrary, PHCN effort to say the least could have been understood, not mitigating their lack of tact in felling those valuable trees.

The situation also brings to sharp focus the rationale by a significant city like Abuja still distributing power through obsolete methods like overhead power cables. There are allegations that in the original design of the city, overhead cables were not a part of the plan by the architects of the city. Chima Okereke a lawyer in Abuja with a bias for environmental and social law said that monies that were earmarked for the construction of underground cables like the ones in high brow sections of the city like Maitama and Asokoro were misappropriated by past governments and officials. ’The construction of these overhead cables came about from the leftover of what was stolen from what was earmarked for the underground cables. There is nowhere in the world today where modern cities use overhead cables. Overhead cables ruin the city’s aesthetics that these trees were supposed to create. So PHCN created the problem in the first place’, Okereke said. According to him, the use of these overhead cables reduces the status of a town like Abuja and further incapacitates Nigeria from participating in the United Nations Framework on Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC, programme on carbon trading.


Other interests too, apart from the PHCN are against the trees. Evidences abound in the central business district, particularly in Wuse and Garki. While the petty trader is happy to display his wares under the trees, big companies like Febson Mall, the Fitness Centre, and all the banks around have chopped down the trees in front of their companies. There are speculations from concerned residents that the trees have been chopped off because they block these companies from view. Therefore, instead of the ‘systematic’ pruning that the senior FCDA official suggested, the trees are mostly chopped off from their base.


At these spots where most of the trees have been chopped off, our investigations show that 70 percent of them were chopped off from the roots. While some are dead out rightly, others are still managing to sprout again fuelling apprehensions that when they grow near the overhead cables, they would be chopped off once more.

For now, the vacuums created from the dead trees have already begun to take a toll on residents, most of who complain of the intensity of the sun. Meanwhile, most of the carcasses from these trees are already being gathered by residents for cremation as firewood.

Climate Change Conspiracy against the African Child

The world’s decision-makers and decision-influencers are gearing up to confront the coming cataclysm of climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark this December 2009. And already, there are indications that apart from giving the impression of coming together to confront the looming danger that carbon emissions stands to wreak on our ecosystem, there will be cacophony of voices, each set to maintain a set of rigid opinions, based on regional and geographical dispositions. The United States, US, under Barack Obama, which everyone thought would take the lead in proposing measures to mitigate and press for proposals for adaptation for climate change does not have relevant legislation in place to back up the plan to re-work a previous agreement [the Kyoto] that sought to provide a framework for curtailing carbon emissions.



Before the turn of the millennium, climate change was beginning to be the sexiest and most controversial topic in public discuss. The gist was that the processes that sustain our comfortable lifestyles as human being have put a lot of strain on the same processes that sustain the delicateness of the earth. Now when we use the term ‘processes’, we do not mean only processes that lead to the emission of carbon from cars, industries, heavy duty nuclear plants, gas flaring, pollution or the like, no. It is much more than that. The things that have brought about climate change involve such little things like that air-conditioner and refrigerator in your house or in your car, that lovely plate of rice you’re about to have for dinner, together with just about any other gizmo that ordinarily gives you a measure of comfort.



What everyone has found out is that the pressure on the earth is leading to an increase in the world’s temperatures, already melting the ice in the North Pole. Now when things like this happens, cities along the coasts like Lagos, Abidjan, Accra, Yaoundé, become particularly vulnerable because of the concomitant rises in sea levels. What this portends for everyone, the North and South, is that the sacking of a city like Lagos would mean that more and more people would be seeking to relocate to either Melbourne, New York or even Copenhagen.




Governments and non-governmental bodies in the North [a synonym for the most developed and richest nations of the world - Europe and the Americas] were not very quick to notice this. But when they did, they took swift action. They have arranged to stop hurting the earth by turning to renewable energy sources – solar, wind, hydro, nuclear and biomass - energy sources that contribute little or nothing to further aggravate the earth’s already precarious condition. They have put in place a global network of the world’s smartest brains to take the message of greening the earth as far as they can. But their best efforts, sadly, have not done much to defrost the thick African and Asian cloud of suspicion surrounding these stellar efforts. ‘Why tell us to go green after you have used up all of the oil to develop your countries? Why not let us develop like you have done before telling us to go green? Are you not the ones responsible for precipitating the climate change problem in the first place?’ most African nations have asked.



It was this kind of thinking that led to an arrangement called carbon trading. Under the Kyoto Agreement of 1997, most countries signatory to it, apart from the United States, had a carbon emission quota of 5.2 percent which they could not exceed, at least up till 2012. If they knew that they would as a result of activities in their individual economies, they had to buy ‘credits’ from those nations that were least likely to exceed theirs. Apparently, the plan did not work, necessitating an overhauling of the entire arrangement with the coming COP 15 Summit in Copenhagen. Apparently again, African and Asian countries still insist that countries of the North were responsible for the looming climate change problem and should be made to carry the biggest can for the mess we are all in today.




If that is the case, that may be why the rumour mill is awash with new gist that Africans contribute more to climate change than anyone else. The rumour mongers cite the high fertility and fecundity ratio of Africans. The allegation [for that is what it is for now] is that because Africans breed more, they consume more power, drive more cars, fell more trees, and eat more rice. The rumour mill also has it that there are strong proposals on the way to impose China’s one-child one-family policy on Africans so that climate would no longer change, and the looming disaster would be averted once and for all.



Well that may be good but definitely not the answer to tackling climate change. I believe that we should leave children out of this problem. Countries of the North and their cronies peddling this kind of allegation must learn that we all must respect a child’s right to a life that he or she had had no hand in destroying. But if the true situation must be cited, we must refer to a recent report by Dr David Satterthwaite, sent to our email boxes by Mike Shanahan. By the way, Shanahan is Press Officer to the International Institute for Environment and Development, IIED, in the United Kingdom. According to Satterthwaite, ‘A child borne into a very poor African household who during their life never escapes from poverty contributes very little to climate change, especially if they die young, as many do. Conversely [sic], A child born into a wealthy household in North America or Europe and enjoys a full life and a high-consumption lifestyle contributes far more – thousands or even ten thousands of times more’. Satterthwaite based his assumption on the following facts: that sub-Saharan Africa had 18.5 percent of the world’s population growth and just 12.6 percent of the growth in carbon emissions; that the US had 3.4 percent of the world’s population growth and 12.6 percent of the growth in carbon emissions; that high income nations had 7 percent of the world’s population growth and 29 percent of the growth in carbon emissions; that low-income countries had 52.1 percent of the world’s population growth and just 12.8 percent of the growth in carbon emissions; that most of the nations with the highest population growth rates had low growth rates for carbon emissions while many of the nations with the lowest population growth rates had high growth rates for carbon dioxide emission.




All that this report has accomplished is that it places a lot of emphasis on where the climate change problem lies – our lifestyles rather than the number of children that Africans bear. I think that is what everyone should focus on. If some African nations have accused the countries of the North as being responsible for the looming danger of climate change, I think the best way to resolve matters is the opportunity provided by COP 15, to try to look at issues from a global perspective rather that what is happening now.





Africans by nature see children as a blessing from God. They believe that a boy or girl is the only raw material with which a man or woman is manufactured. To a large extent however, this belief in the child being a blessing makes us produce then, even when our resources cannot take care of them. Matters are compounded because a whole lot of these children did not have the choices of whom or where they are borne. If we realize this, we must be thinking way ahead of putting relevant measures in place to secure the future of the children all over the world by adjusting our lifestyles. Take for instance what happens in Germany and most of Europe – most people do not drive cars. They hop on the trains clutching their bicycles and ride on when they are near their destinations. The effect is that there is less and less carbon emissions and a more and more healthy and trimmer population with a clearer mind. Those are the kind of messages we should try to send, even though it will hurt the economy of the country making the cars. That, in my estimation may prove much more relevant that peddling these rumours about our children that have no basis either in logic of facts.

Avoiding the pitfalls from relying on renewable energy

One thing that Nigerians have always wished for and never got in the past decade is steady power supply. Governments before and after now grappled with the problem but nobody has come up with the panacea to that seemingly intractable problem. Recall that when the OBJ administration boasted that it would tackle the power problem within six months of his administration’s inception but failed, most Nigerians were disappointed and anybody who knows how indispensable power supply is to the economy would not blame us for being this sceptical of whatever efforts anybody seems to put in.

Because of the indispensable role that power plays in the domestic and economic lives of our people, it therefore stands to reason why most people and government institutions now rely on power generation machines both as backup as well as alternative sources of power.


Despite the caution and the scepticism that has trailed President Yar’Adua’s plan to provide Nigerians with 6000 megawatts of electricity by December 2009, one thing however gives room for great expectations. And that is that the plan is predicated upon the president’s plan to resort to non-conventional methods of generating power akin to what obtains in most of Europe and the Americas.


Today, because of the danger that reliance of fossil fuels has on world climate, most countries in Europe and the Americas have decentralized their energy sources from a single power source. They have come to the point where, using the latest technology, they harvest power from the sun, the wind, water, food, geothermal and waste from diverse sources to produce power that is channelled into a national grid.


The popular name given to this process is known as ‘renewable energy’, which is derivable from the fact that these sources of power are infinite, and therefore are renewable, quite unlike the precarious nature of crude oil by-products like gas and fuel. At present, the world gets 34 percent of its energy needs from oil, 21 percent from gas, 24 percent from coal, seven percent from nuclear sources and 14 percent from renewable energy.


But just the same way as great expectations sometimes give way to great disappointments, we should not expect that just because the power ministry has decided to resort to the renewable power generation option, it is already Eldorado. Take the Wind Mill Farm in Zafarana, Egypt example - sometime ago in 1982, the Egyptians set up the New and Renewable Energy Authority, NREA, to build wind mills not just that it wanted to augment the 20 and 80 percent power that it generated from the River Nile and thermal power sources respectively.

They also wanted to be able to export and mitigate the hazards that power from gas posed to their environment. All of the technology and expertise and money came from Europe with the local people providing the manpower needs required to erect the massive wind mills. In spite of the fact that everything seemed to have been put in place, the 80 billion – euro project was nearly a flop. Why? The executors of the project did not do a thorough job in carrying out a comprehensive environmental impact assessment of the area to find out if the project was feasible and viable or not.

There were reports that even though they later found out that the mines planted there in the wars that the British and Germans fought in the 19th Century, to carve the Suez as an area of military influence, many local and international workers were killed. Apart from that, when the project was completed at great human and material cost, everyone found out that windmills would never work on that site and in an Egypt that has a lot of sandstorms blowing sand into the mills. Not even when the specialists got air-conditioners and special protection against sand ingress.
Or take the case in Germany. She is world leader in wind energy production, with a potential to generate 1,200mw, representing 54% of what is generated worldwide; Germany is also European leader in solar thermal collections and has captured 50% of the market in Europe.


Now, the authorities succeeded in decentralizing power generated from solar energy. Buoyed by the fact that the ordinary man could erect solar photovoltaic panels on his rooftop and sell power to the national grid, government decided to go a step further. It invested more in wind power but this time, not everyone could participate in this venture because of its capital-intensive nature. Take the instance of the erection of a Bergey Windpower with a 10-kilowatt generator, including a power inverter and installation which costs a whopping $40,000.00.


However, there was a little hiccup. The decision to erect some high-tech windmills in an area it considered safe and ‘windy’ – the famous Black forest located in Freiburg, was a big environmental mistake. Germans don’t mess with their Black forest, a treasured natural and national monument situated on a mass of hills. The valuable pine trees in that forest are closely guarded by forest rangers who know every tree in that vast place by name. Therefore when the government decided to cut down several of the Black forest trees to erect windmills nearly the sizes of a Nigerian village all hell let lose. Freiburgians began to complain, [and rightly so] that the mechanical devices which look like giant birds might scare off natural habitat in the black forest and ruin the beauty of the landscape. But even though the people who erected those massive windmills got away with it, the message was sent right through Europe that there were other factors to consider before you begin to construct masts and towers and panels and mills.


If environmental assessment evaluations are just the problems, then our power problems are solved forever. I guess this is so because anyone involved with the plan to erect wind mills and construct photovoltaic panels must bear in mind that even though relying on renewable energy can mitigate the dangers of climate change, the technology does not come cheap. Equipment does not come cheap initially.


They require a lot of money to construct but who would go through all that trouble only to discover that he does not have the required manpower to maintain the structures?


So many questions begin to crop up as we tinker with the laudable plan to invest in renewable energy sources. The first is this: do the people encouraging the government to invest in renewable energy sources know what they are talking about? Do they have micro offices and departments in their offices manned by knowledgeable people who could give them cutting edge advice on the latest trends in the renewable energy industry?


A lot of people I have talked to concerning the ‘environment’ still hold this anachronistic notion that the environment is mere physical surroundings. Some think of the environment and of renewable energy mostly in terms of solar panels and all that, and regard solar panels as the ‘silver bullet’, that should take care of the evil spirit of our perpetual dark disposition. It is not so. When discussions concerning renewable energy take place, we would just find out that this country overflows with natural and artificial methods of turning biomass – waste - in whatever form – to energy.


According to Henner Weithoener, a renewable expert, ‘there is no single solution to the energy problem’. He advises also that for us to succeed in getting our priorities right in our quest to achieve 6,000 megawatts that Mr President has promised by December, ‘we must be sceptical and critical’ of the seemingly unplanned moves being made to explore the renewable energy option.


Let us learn from the Egyptians again. When the Zafarana Wind Mill Farm idea was mooted in 1982, it took them another four years to come up with a policy statement in the form of RNEA. The thrust of that policy statement was that power from wind was to make up 5% of the total renewable energy accruable to Egypt by 2005, and targeted at one hundred thousand Egyptian homes with 500,000 villagers. Just at the turn of the millennium, they already had a well-thought out plan encapsulated in the Renewable Energy Sources Act of 2000.



Where then do we stand with our plan to explore the renewable energy option? Are the enabling laws in place yet? When we eventually build the mills and the photovoltaic panels, have we decided either to make them grid or off grid structures? Will power now become a decentralized affair, where anyone can generate power and sell and make money?


If the power plants that the African Development Bank, ADB, is planning to finance in Nigeria will be in the hands of businessmen, will Nigerians then still be able to afford the costs of regular power supply? What are the maintenance costs? How will government harmonise its own plan to provide 6,000 megawatts by December, vis-a-vis the plan of the ADB?

An international finance body, International Finance Corporation, IFC, said that it invested about $463 million for the development of renewable energy in 2005, $1.105 billion for 2006, $682 million for 2007, $1.665 billion for 2008 and $3.128 billion for 2009. If that is the case, where are these projects located? What mode of renewable energy generation is involved? How many kilowatts have these projects that have gulped so much money generated?

Nigeria’s economic problems have been traced to only one source - power. Attached to this inability to generate 6000 MW before now, has been the utter lack of political will and an outdated grid system that will not allow those who can, to generate their own power and move the country forward. And until we address some of these outdated policies, our drive for renewable energy sources and for the generation of 6000mw by December 2009 is already stymied.

To a nation of stereotypes...

There are certain times in our lives as a people [note that I said people not nation], when we should feel embarrassed at ourselves. And indeed, there is no other time than now for that embarrassment to sink deep into the labyrinths of our psyche, especially at the onset of the sanusification of the banking industry. When the good breeze suddenly hit the CEOs of the nation’s prominent banking halls, it produced all manner of conspiracy theories that began to churn some of our guts. The most useless of them all was that the sanusification of our banks was motivated by an ethnic agenda, spearheaded from the North to check the dominance of these CEOs who were from the east, west and south. How sad, how simple and how unfortunate. Yes, it is sad, it is simple and it is unfortunate. At this auspicious moment of our lives when we should heave a sigh of relief that a Hercules has taken the gauntlet to do our dirty laundry for us publicly, we have no business orchestrating conspiratorial theories of ethnicity.


See, we must not heap all of the paranoia flying around only on the paranoid. These sentiments run deep in our body politic, represented by a virus-infected micro-chip buried somewhere in the central processing unit of our people. Where did that configuration that certain tribes like the Hausas, the Igbo and Yoruba respectively ‘control’ political power, commercial ingenuity and academic finesse come from? Because, if only these three tribes, [out of a nation of more than 250 tribes], were actually to ‘control’ these key areas of our lives, then the rest of us are certainly nothing but minnows akin to the biblical hewers of wood and drawers of water.
But that should not be, should it? Nobody has a prerogative of intellect, commercial ingenuity or political power in a truly federal system. The whole thing is supposed to be Okonkwoic, based on solid personal achievements. We have seen a certain guy from the North, Aliko Dangote wrestle the so-called dogged business acumen of the Igbo from the Igbo in terms of the doggedness he introduced in business. We have also seen a Philip Emeagwali, emerge as the originator of the internet, perhaps to debunk the notion that the Yoruba are the only academic people around. For the sake of the argument, let us also mention the kampe exponent, OBJ, one who has had the good fortune to rule this nation twice. It will be needless to be reminded of the sublime example in the United States, US, where a seeming nonentity like Barack Obama is now president.


It is at the base of these stereotypes that the tribal and ethnic conspiracy theory certainly sprang from. Look at the ethnic profiles of the CEOs that have been sacked – Ibru is from the South-South, Akingbola is from the South-West, Nwosu and Adigwe are from the South-East and the man who sacked them is from the North. And so there is a problem, not so? Not so fast my compatriots, let’s reason this together, you and I - what we have not considered, or should we say, what we have chosen not to consider is that even a Soludo, with all of the toughness ascribable to him from the soludification he carried out was not ready to wield the big stick, even when he knew that these CEOs were being irresponsible with our funds.. He too [it can be argued] was suffering from the disease of ethnicity in the discharge of his responsibilities as CBN boss – all the sanusied CEOs are Soludo’s playmates, and so, how do you expect him to sack them? Otherwise, how come Soludo did not sack them even when he knew that these CEOs were becoming irresponsible with public funds? Are we then going to rely on the gist that made the rounds that these CEOs collected huge sums to throw a birthday bash for Soludo, with the caveat that he turned a blind eye to the many cases of misdemeanor allegedly perpetrated by the big ogas? Are we to rely on another gist that the sacked CEOs collected as much as five billion naira to stop the Senate screening and eventual confirmation of Lamido Sanusi? If there is any iota of truth in these speculations, why would these people want to stop Sanusi’s confirmation if they didn’t have any skeletons in their vaults?


For us Nigerians as a people, the time has come for us to realize that anytime we fan the embers of ethnicity and tribalism we easily wind the clock of our progress back, back to the days before we were colonized by the Brits. For this is not the only time we have allowed specious reasoning like this to becloud our sense of circumspection. We do it all the time. I remember as a boy, that there was a certain military dictator known as Mohammadu Buhari. He arrested and shot dead some drug pushers - Bartholomew Owoh and Lawal Ojulope. You know what? The hue and cry then was not that shooting them dead was a barbaric act, but that the drug pushers were very handsome boys. Oh shiver my timbers - what has being handsome got to do with the fact that these boys were caught-red-handed in the act of cocaine smuggling? And today, what has ethnicity got to do with the fact that the sacked ogas and marams were sacked because they were not any different from the American who organized the heist that crashed the Wall Street, and was a catalyst for the global financial crisis? Does it matter who sacked them? Were they not replaced by people from the same ethnic background as the sacked ogas and marams? Nigerians, we must grow up o!

Can the National Assembly Save Abuja?

At inception in 1999, the National Assembly of the Federal Republic of Nigeria was no different from the old OAU. Notice that before the old OAU knocked off the O and transmuted into the AU, that body was almost moribund and was notoriously referred to as a toothless bulldog. And this was mostly because nearly all those famous heads of state and government that usually gathered at those fanciful plenary sessions in Addis Abba usually made flowery speeches that lacked the political will that could have checkmated the incidences of wars, poverty, diseases and regular occurrences of famine that rocked Sub-Saharan, East and Central Africa.


The configuration of our National Assembly is no different. When they mounted the stage in 1999, they constantly insulted our sensibilities with one scandal or the other. If they were not fighting over certificate scams, it was that they wanted allowances for shoes, houses and cars. It is granted that even though this could be seen as a perfect Nigerian example of a ‘learning process’, what seems to have been evident at the end of the day was that all they wanted to do was recoup the huge funds that they expended in the escapade of securing the various sinecures that most of their positions have become. At a point, they held the nation hostage with all sorts of tales concerning GMG bags flying around the assembly to such an extent that these honourable sinators and representathieves resorted to fisticuffs in the protection of their personal interests.



As time went on, it began to dawn on the psyche of a baffled nation that perhaps it was a mistake to have stayed on those long queues to votes these people in. Our people have discovered that since inception, nearly every leadership of the National Assembly had gotten itself mired in one controversy or the other, not so much in the interest of the people who voted them in, but more in the protection of the centrifugal interests of their godfathers. If Nigerians have begun to realize that the National Assembly is becoming moribund like the old OAU, it began with the realization that nearly all the laws that they claim to have passed in the last decade have not put food on our tables, have not engendered steady power supply, have not stopped many government officials from visiting hospitals abroad when they fall ill, and have not been able to pass the relevant laws that makes oil exploration be a catalyst for sustainable development. How has the existence of the National Assembly impacted on the life of cocoa farmers, of the artisan by the street corner in Idi-Iroko, and the beans farmer in Bama, Borno State?



We must be able to say it straightaway that these people resemble carpetbaggers than anything else. And rather than think this is an irresponsible or cheap shot at the honourables, we must be able to expatiate. Think back at the several times when the National Assembly has insisted that it must be ‘carried along’, in the execution of certain brilliant ideas and innovations that do not emanate from the hallowed chambers of the legislative bodies. Take the case of Nuhu Ribadu, take the case of El-Rufai, and now take the case of Lamido Sanusi, and most important now, take the case of Adamu Aliero, FCT Minister. Now, there is nothing constitutionally wrong in insisting on being ‘carried along’. However, something churns in our guts when being carried along carries the caveat that if they are not ‘settled’, then that bright idea no matter how bright it is would not see the light of day. Take for instance the sanisification of our rotten financial institutions. Instead of the National Assembly to stand solidly behind the efforts to sanitise the industry, the house committee that invited Lamido Sanusi to defend printing money to save the banks that Charles Soludo said were healthy did not only display incredible instances of ignorance at that amount of money, but gist had it that it wanted to be ‘settled’. A lot of people are wondering why Soludo, the man who presided over the rot in the banking system has not been invited for questioning in the roles he played in crippling the system. Rather than do that, most of them are busy chasing shadows and are already falling over each other to be in the good books of the man who is touted to be the next governor of Anambra state.



It is the same story with the Federal Capital Territory. For anybody visiting that town today for the very first time, it will be clear that this is one town that could compare favourably with any modern city either in Europe or in the Americas. But that prospect is currently in the throes of being scuttled and endangered by a group of sinators, representathieves and another clique who are in that town with just one purpose - to grab and to grab choice portions of land. Nothing again, is wrong with that but most of these choice spots of land are areas in choice spots of the city earmarked for parks, recreational centres, petrol stations, schools and homes for the blind. What these people do is that they get these choice spots mostly by hook and crook, and cheaply too, and sell and re-sell for billions of naira. Again and again, nothing seems to be wrong with that, but none of those accruable monies for the sales of these lands go into the pockets Adamu Aliero, the FCT minister, who desperately needs as much as $USD12billion annually to maintain the modern status of the FCT. Perhaps left with no choice on how to maintain the status of the FCT without a recourse to an ever dwindling allocation from the Federal purse, Adamu Aliero was reported to have recommended to the Federal government to allow him adopt a 900 percent increase in land charges in the FCT.


That is the crux of the matter again. And again, just like the way the House Committee that took Sanusi to task did not do their homework properly before inviting him over to explain his intention in printing the monies that bailed out those banks, Attai Ali Aidoko, House Committee chairman on the FCT, is also already fuming over the new levies. According to him, ‘we view this as a serious legal breach and urge the FCT administration to withdraw immediately the implementation of the new rates, until due consideration is made by the National Assembly as the constitutional and democratic representatives of the people’, he said. But that is all lies. Lies. One, the people mostly affected by the new levies are the legislators, not the common people. Two, even though the Land Use Act is deemed to be subordinate to the National Assembly, that does not undermine the minister’s right to introduce these new charges. Lawyers, who know better, have maintained that since there is no existing tax law for the FCT, the only recourse left is the powers granted the minister under the Land Use Act.



The National Assembly of this country should desist from insisting on being ‘carried along’ when bright ideas that would be of benefit to Nigerians are mooted by other arms of government. This is not so as to rubbish their integrity, but it just saves everyone the embarrassment and an indictment that they are not thinking but that other people are thinking first what they should have long thought and acted on.

Interview with Elizabeth John, friend to Monkeys in Nigeria

How did you come to be living here in Igbo Obo?

I began to live here in Igbo Obo after the death of my husband in 1994. He was a native of Bayelsa State and I am from Ondo state. I sell pounded yam and amala here in Igbo Obo.

What is your relationship with these monkeys here in Igbo Obo?
These monkeys and I live like neighbours here in this bush. In most cases when there are no students on campus, we live together, play together, fight together and sometimes we discuss together concerning their welfare.

When you say ‘discuss together’, what exactly are you talking about? Do you talk to the monkeys? Do they understand you?

I always speak Yoruba to them, particularly when they are being naughty. Yesterday when they were impatient to get their meals, they were making a nuisance of themselves, so I told them, E kuron bii! Maa no hinn, translated to mean, ‘You all should leave here at once otherwise I will beat you!’ They all went back into the forest after I said so. They only came back after I invited them for lunch.


What makes these monkeys in Igbo Obo happy or different from any other monkey elsewhere?

They love food, not just any food but pounded yam. Given a choice between banana and pounded yam, they go for pounded yam. They also love sitting side by side my customers and sharing their food. If you were not careful, you would think that they are human being wearing masks.


You have special sound to call the monkeys. How did you devise that sound?

My father used to have a crocodile and some dogs. He would make the sound and both the crocodiles and dogs would respond to his call. As a child, I used to call the crocodile and dog too with that same sound. When I found myself here in 1994, I remembered it and decided to use it to call the monkeys. I was not surprised that they responded to it.

If there was a need to protect these monkeys from people like Mordi [a poacher], how would you think it can be done?


I think it is the government that should have that power to do that.

But if the government were to give you the responsibility to take care of these monkeys, would you be interested?

Oh yes, I would. I like the monkeys very much. They are very good company. They are not too different from human beings.

On the Brink of Extinction

Time was 7 am and Elizabeth John, also known as Iya John, a petty food seller whose stall is located behind the University of Lagos Guest House, Akoka, Lagos to is set to commence business for the day.

As usual, at this time of the day, her makeshift canteen was a beehive of activities. Unarguably an expert in the preparation of Amala and pounded yam delicacies, John’s canteen attracts a sizeable number of patrons including students and staff.

But they are not the only ones who enjoy John’s food. A special breed of monkeys, the Cercopithecus, also known as Mona monkey equally enjoy meals provided by John. While the woman serve her patron plates of pounded yam and Amala which costs between N200 and N300, the monkeys, usually in their large numbers, patiently wait in turn. They had to because they would not have to pay for their own meal. But they get it all the same. “They love pounded yam the most. If you give them a choice between a bunch of banana and pounded yam, they usually go for the pounded yam first before the banana or garri,” John said.

Over the last 15 years, John had come to understand, appreciate and learn how to peacefully cohabite with the monkeys. She could not have done otherwise. Her restaurant is located in a semi-dense cluster of tall mangrove trees in a valley behind the UNILAG guest house. Apart from the fact that the place is dangerously close to a crocodile-infested swamp, the location of John’s restaurant is also known as Igbo Obo (monkey village). This is because the valley and its surrounding boast of a large number of monkeys, many of which have been identified by zoologists as Mona monkeys.
Over the years, a special kind of bond, resembling the type that existed between Tarzan and the Apes, in Marvel Comics, has developed between John and the large colony of monkeys. She even speaks Yoruba language to the apes and they respond. When she speak, they respond to such instructions like Maabo [come here], Maalo [go away], Ewa jeun [come and eat]. They also speak to John. When they want to speak, the monkeys respond with a fusillade of chattering and seeming bickering sounds. To a casual observer, these sounds may give the impression that the monkeys are angry or agitated.

The magazine however learnt that this is not so. Zoologists say when the monkeys make such sounds, they are only communicating love, excitement and sometimes anxiety. And they sure have every reason to be able to communicate. Monkeys in Igbo Obo can in fact be said to be educated. Some of the students the magazine spoke with said the monkeys take over the classrooms when the students are not there. The students said they often stumble on some of the monkeys sitting in the classrooms and mimicking a normal class activity.

When they are hungry, the monkeys could also get very naughty. At such times, John said they gather around her fireplace and generally disrupt activities until they are attended. To invite them to a meal, John lets out a special sound that strangers to Igbo Obo find hard to imitate. Whenever she makes the sound, which is just like the type used for calling pet dogs, the monkeys simply appear literally from nowhere and devour whatever John offers them. But they don’t do the same with food items offered them by strangers. In this case, the monkeys would keenly smell the food and determine whether or not to eat it. John said that they do this out of fear that they could be poisoned and killed. They have however come to trust John over the years. From her observation, John said, “The female monkeys usually woo the males, and this is because the males feel that it is their right – after all they guard their colony and so expect something in return. The females give birth in November and on a number of occasions, they have come to present their infants to me.”
In return for her friendship, John said the monkeys guard her properties jealously. In addition, they tip her off when dangerous animals like snakes and crocodiles lurk around. On a certain day when a huge snake, tried to attack John, she said that the monkeys made one hell of a noise that scared the snake and made it run away. Unfortunately however, they were unable to do anything the day John’s makeshift cafeteria was razed by fire in her absence. They probably would have made noise but that was certainly not enough to stop the fire from wreaking havoc. “Before I got here after the fire, they had all lined up on the trees wearing mournful looks, and making certain sad noises that appeared that they were in sympathy with me,” John said of that incident.

Intrigued by the monkeys and their way of life, Muyibat Bada, a final year Zoology student, UNILAG, recently carried out a 7-month long study on the apes and their kingdom within UNILAG. This was as part of requirements for the completion of her thesis titled, The Biology of Mona Monkeys. Bada said her findings showed that the monkeys were of the same specie, but live in three separate groups. The first group, she said, controls the bushes around the faculty of environmental sciences, while the second and third groups of monkeys inhabit the faculty of arts building and the bushes behind the university guest house. Bada told the magazine that in the course of her study, she befriended the monkeys by bringing them gifts like loaves of bread.

But there are times the relationship between the monkeys in UNILAG and the human population around may not be that cordial. A good example is the experience of a food vendor, simply identified as Iya Bendel. For her, the monkeys are nothing but a bunch of nuisance. “Yesterday, as I got here to resume my work, I dropped my bunch of plantain on the ground and made to open the door to my shed. But before I could open the shed and turn around, the whole bunch of banana was gone. The cheeky monkeys were eating my plantain and pelting me with the plantain peels,” she said.
The monkeys have also constituted themselves into a terror band for people with farm lands within and around UNILAG. Some of these people who pleaded anonymity said they had resorted to planting only tuber crops because of the hungry monkeys. Unlike John and Bada, some others are not as patient and understanding when dealing with the monkeys. To them, monkeys are wild animals meant to be trapped, killed and eaten. For instance, sources told the magazine that a policeman who was invited to campus to keep the peace shot and killed several of the monkeys.

His action was said to have startled the university authorities that sent him packing from the campus. But that was not all that the university did. It also forbade any kind of hunting of any other animal on the campus, including the monkeys. In spite of this, the monkeys still have an arch-enemy in a hunter simply identified as Mordi. He is attached to the University of Lagos as a security official. Mordi told the magazine that he had lost count of the number of monkeys he had killed, eaten and sold. Armed with a silent gun and a catapult, Mordi takes advantage of the monkeys in the morning and usually aims for the young ones. “If you want to eat monkey meat, just give me two days and I will supply you what you need,” he said. Each monkey costs from N1,500 to N2,000, and those who want their monkeys alive pay more.

The monkeys have however devised ways of resisting the likes of Mordi. The magazine learnt that as soon as the monkeys hear the sound of Mordi’s approaching motorbike, one of them gives out a sound which is a signal that they must retreat into the belly of the forest. John told the magazine that there was even a day Mordi shot and killed an infant monkey. But as he approached to pick up his quarry, about 10 other monkeys suddenly swooped on him. They bit, scratched and tried to wrestle Mordi to the ground but they failed. A determined Mordi managed to make off with his catch, which he said, ended up in his pot of soup the following day. Apart from people like Mordi, the monkeys are also depleted through electrocution by naked electric cables around the 133 KVA power plant opposite the university bookshop.

But such incidences appear to be the least of concerns for Taiwo Idowu, parasitologist and lecturer at the Zoology department, UNILAG. Idowu is concerned about what may happen in the event that the monkeys are infected through by-products from the sewage that is regularly channeled to the forest which serves as their abode. Idowu’s worries stem from the fact that monkeys carry viruses that can easily spread to humans. This is equally part of the findings of Bada after her 7-month study of the apes. “They suffer the same diseases like we do, they eat virtually everything we eat apart from pepper and oil, and have forms of culture and government like we have. In fact, these monkeys carry genes that have been used to develop an anti-rabies vaccine,” she said.

Bada is however not happy that the university has not exploited the large presence of the monkeys and other wildlife on the campus to construct a mini-zoo both for research and tourism. “Some of my fellow students applied to the University for funds to start a mini-zoo, but it did not see the light of day, probably because there were no funds,” Bada said. Indeed, the university authorities are not thinking in the line of turning Igbo Obo into a tourist attraction yet. Harrison Longe, dean of student affairs, UNILAG, said if the university will ever do that, it is not in the near future. On the contrary, the magazine learnt that the university authorities may be under pressure to sell the forest to banks and other commercial interests that are pestering it for space on the campus.

The University’s wildlife conservation society which is supposed to rise to the defense of the monkeys and other wildlife in the circumstance is also said to be comatose. Akeem Kadiri, a member of the University of Lagos wildlife conservation society said apart from arresting whoever is arrested for killing the monkeys in Igbo Obo and handing them over to the police, there is nothing much anybody can do for now concerning the welfare of the monkeys.

In the meantime, the monkeys have continued to find solace in the true friendship of John who appears to be the only one willing and ready to defend their interest at the moment.