In the early 1990s, Nigeria set out an ambitious vision: to conserve its forests, protect wildlife, and ensure that communities could coexist with fragile ecosystems. The National Parks Service Act of 1991 was heralded as a landmark piece of legislation, one that finally put legal weight behind conservation. For the first time, national parks were given clear protection, rangers were empowered to arrest poachers, and activities such as hunting, farming, and logging within protected areas were criminalized.
On paper, it was a powerful framework. The law spelled out penalties, including prison terms of up to five years, for those who violated park rules. It prohibited weapons in protected areas, laid out rules for community engagement, and encouraged ecotourism as an alternative income source. Alongside this act, Nigeria also passed an Environmental Impact Assessment law, later developed a National Climate Change Act, and introduced a national policy on plastic waste management. These legal frameworks promised citizens cleaner rivers, healthier forests, restored soils, and a future where economic development would not destroy the very ecosystems that sustain life.
Yet more than three decades later, the forests are thinning, rivers are polluted, species are vanishing, and communities that were meant to benefit are instead struggling for survival. The gap between the written provisions and their implementation has left Nigeria in an environmental paradox: a nation with strong laws but weak enforcement, where promises made in Abuja rarely translate to protection on the ground.
The Paper Shield of Conservation
The National Parks Service Act is emblematic of Nigeria’s approach. Its language is unequivocal: anyone who kills, captures, or even harasses wild animals in a national park is guilty of an offense. Entry with weapons is prohibited. The penalties are stiff, months to years in prison, fines, or both. To further deter exploitation, the Act bans logging, settlement, and grazing inside the parks.
The intent was clear. Nigeria’s seven national parks, Cross River, Gashaka-Gumti, Yankari, Kainji Lake, Old Oyo, Okomu, and Kamuku were to serve as bastions of biodiversity. Together they cover over 20,000 square kilometers, protecting elephants, chimpanzees, antelopes, and rare birds, while also safeguarding watersheds and carbon sinks vital in an era of climate change.
The law was not alone. Nigeria signed up to global treaties, from the Convention on Biological Diversity to the Paris Climate Agreement. The Climate Change Act of 2021 even set up a carbon budget framework, while the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA) was empowered to regulate pollution, enforce industrial compliance, and prosecute offenders.
On paper, Nigeria looks well equipped to guard its natural heritage. But laws, no matter how robust, are only as strong as their enforcement. And it is here that the story begins to unravel.
The Cracks in the Wall: Where Implementation Fails
Take Kainji Lake National Park, once one of the jewels of West Africa’s conservation system. A study published in 2023 revealed that poachers and illegal grazers operate with near impunity. Rangers, underpaid and under-equipped, are often outnumbered. With few patrol vehicles, inadequate weapons, and limited communication tools, they face an uphill battle against organized groups who profit from bushmeat and illegal grazing. “We have the laws, but not the means to enforce them,” one ranger admitted during field interviews.
The result is a park under siege. Buffalo and antelope populations are shrinking. Domestic cattle wander freely into conservation zones, transmitting disease and degrading vegetation. The Act forbids this, but without capacity to enforce, the rules become symbolic, a paper shield against real-world threats.
Cross River National Park offers another sobering example. Designed to protect one of Africa’s richest rainforests, home to the endangered Cross River gorilla, the park continues to lose forest cover year after year. Satellite images tell the story starkly: more than 450 square kilometers of forest vanished between 1986 and 2020, much of it due to illegal logging. Chainsaws hum in areas where the law says silence should reign, and timber trucks rumble out at night, carrying away planks that represent both biodiversity loss and lost revenue for future generations.
The Niger Delta, meanwhile, illustrates how gaps in environmental enforcement devastate entire communities. Here, the issue is not national parks but oil pollution. Laws require companies to prevent, mitigate, and clean up spills, while the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (Hyprep) was mandated to restore contaminated lands. But according to an Associated Press investigation, many cleanup contracts were awarded to firms with no relevant expertise, oversight was weak, and locals reported that sites declared “remediated” remained barren and toxic. For fisherfolk and farmers, the law’s promises meant little as they faced poisoned water, ruined harvests, and a rising tide of illness.
Urban Nigeria tells a parallel story in miniature. Lagos banned single-use plastics and Styrofoam, promising cleaner drainage channels and reduced flooding. Yet months after the ban, traders and food vendors still handed out Styrofoam packs. Enforcement officers were too few to cover the sprawling megacity, and alternatives were either unavailable or unaffordable. The law existed; compliance did not.
These failures, across different ecosystems, share common roots: underfunded agencies, corruption, political interference, lack of equipment, and in some cases, the indifference of officials who benefit from the very violations they are meant to police.
The Human Cost of Paper Laws
The implementation gap is not an abstract governance issue; it is lived daily by millions. In the Delta, families mourn not only the loss of their livelihoods but the deaths of loved ones linked to polluted drinking water. In the north, creeping desertification reduces farmland, fueling migration and conflict between herders and farmers. In forest-edge communities, children grow up never seeing the wildlife their grandparents described, while elders worry about vanishing medicinal plants and fruits once collected freely.
Trust in government erodes as people see laws announced with fanfare but rarely enforced. Communities asked to cooperate with conservation projects often resist, arguing that they are asked to sacrifice without receiving benefits. Poachers, illegal loggers, and polluters exploit this distrust, offering short-term income that undermines long-term sustainability.
The ecosystems themselves bear silent witness. Nigeria lost nearly 1.3 million hectares of tree cover between 2001 and 2022. More than 500 species are now listed as threatened with extinction. Mangroves that once buffered the coast against storms are shrinking, exposing villages to flooding. Each hectare lost is not just biodiversity gone, but food, water, and cultural identity diminished.
Glimpses of Hope Within the Gaps
Yet it would be wrong to say enforcement never works. There are sparks of innovation and resilience. In October 2023, Nigeria’s National Parks Service signed a 31-year co-management agreement with the West African Conservation Network to revitalize Kainji Lake National Park. The model borrows from Benin’s partnership with African Parks in Pendjari, where professional ranger training, satellite collars for elephants, and community-based income projects have revived wildlife populations.
Community monitoring has also shown promise. In some parts of Cross River, NGOs have trained locals to use GPS and smartphones to map illegal logging sites, forcing authorities to respond. Public interest litigation, though slow, has in some cases compelled compensation or cleanup from oil companies. And in 2024, the federal government launched new environmental audit guidelines, aimed at compelling industries to undergo stricter third-party checks and publicly disclose compliance records.
These examples, though isolated, hint at what Nigeria could achieve if policies were matched with political will, adequate resources, and community ownership.
Lessons from Neighbors: What Benin Got Right
Benin’s experience with Pendjari National Park underscores the potential of partnerships. When African Parks took over management in 2017, rangers were retrained, better equipped, and supported by aerial surveillance. Within a few years, elephant populations stabilized, poaching declined, and communities began to see ecotourism as a viable livelihood alternative. By investing in both people and protection, Benin managed to close the gap between law and practice.
Nigeria has far larger and more complex parks, but the lesson is transferable: strong laws need strong institutions, backed by professional management and genuine community benefit. Without that, policies remain lofty aspirations.
Charting a Way Forward
Nigeria does not lack policies. What it lacks is the machinery to breathe life into those policies. The solution lies not in drafting yet more laws, but in fixing the cracks of enforcement. Agencies like NESREA and the National Parks Service must be adequately funded, not just in recurrent expenditure but in equipment, technology, and staff welfare. Rangers should be trained and respected as frontline defenders, not left as underpaid targets for poachers.
Transparency is another cornerstone. Communities must be given access to information on environmental assessments, audit reports, and cleanup contracts. Open data platforms would allow civil society and the media to hold both companies and regulators accountable.
Community engagement is equally critical. Conservation cannot succeed if locals view parks as sources of exclusion. Income-generating programs from beekeeping to eco-tourism to agroforestry must be integrated into park management, giving people tangible benefits from preservation.
Technology offers additional support. Satellite imagery, drones, and remote sensors can detect illegal activities in real time, but these tools must be paired with legal provisions that make such digital evidence admissible in court.
Finally, Nigeria must align incentives. Companies that adopt cleaner technologies should be rewarded with tax breaks or faster permits, while violators must face swift, public penalties that outweigh the profits of noncompliance.
Closing the Gap Before It Widens
The story of Nigeria’s environmental governance is one of ambition undermined by inertia. The laws are there, but their power drains away in the gap between Abuja’s legal texts and the realities of the field. Every oil spill left uncleaned, every forest cut illegally, every plastic ban unenforced is not just a policy failure but a blow to the communities and ecosystems that sustain the nation.
Yet Nigeria is not without hope. The seeds of reform are visible in community monitoring, public-private partnerships, environmental audits, and regional lessons from neighbors. What remains is the political courage to act: to fund enforcement, protect institutions from capture, and put citizens at the heart of conservation.
The gap between provisions and implementation is not inevitable. It is the result of choices and it can be narrowed by choices as well. If Nigeria chooses enforcement with the same vigor that it drafts policies, its people and ecosystems may yet see the promise of the laws fulfilled.
This story was written and produced as part of a media skills development programme delivered by Centre for Climate change and Food Security (CCCFS), Ghana Journalists for Environment, Science, Health and Agriculture (GJESHA), and The North Journals. The content is the sole responsibility of the author and the publisher.