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00:00:55the Nigerian Conservation Foundation is a primer non-governmental
00:00:58organization dedicated. to nature conservation
00:01:02its 37th annual general meeting in Lagos, the foundation
00:01:06appointed former vice president professor Yami Oshimbajo as
00:01:09the president of its board of trustees, succeeding chief Philippe
00:01:13asudu, under this new leadership, the NCF aims to
00:01:17skill nationwide programs and
00:01:19of enhance youth
00:01:21of participation in climate action. Today on the program we look at the
00:01:25prospects and of course the challenges before the prof, just
00:01:29of stay with us.
00:01:32of Just
00:01:36135 km not east of
00:01:38in Lagos lies the forest Reserve in Ogun
00:01:42State.
00:01:47Spanning over 130,000 hectares or is
00:01:51one of West Africa's
00:01:53of last centuries for endangered chimpanzees, white
00:01:56throughted ganon monkeys and Nigeria's few. remaining
00:02:00forest elephants, but these globally
00:02:04recognized biosphere is being systematically
00:02:08of dismantled from
00:02:10of within.
00:02:12of For generations, licensed
00:02:15loggers have operated on the state
00:02:18quarters, but as timber demand
00:02:21explodes in the country's commercial hubs, loggers are pushing
00:02:25deeper into the reserves for preservation zones and they
00:02:29aren't.
00:02:30a
00:02:36of
00:02:41contractor here
00:02:44I'm in area a J4. If I could say highly disappointed because when
00:02:48I came in here everything was the sur
00:02:51was working, the road was maintained by the
00:02:55project, but for now
00:02:59over... close to 15 years now
00:03:03is only
00:03:03of been contractor we contractor that repairing the
00:03:07road and most
00:03:09in especially now
00:03:11a that the the ministry of
00:03:13ag
00:03:17have how will i put it they have putting their
00:03:19own
00:03:23business here we the contractor we
00:03:27loggers don't have a say? more
00:03:31of because the ministry of ag taken over the
00:03:34forest, farmers are finishing the wood,
00:03:38finishing the wood, destroying the
00:03:41wood for us to cut to
00:03:45generate resources for the for
00:03:48the forest ministry, why they
00:03:52of the farmers are generating resources for the ministry of
00:03:56agrek, very soon that won't be..."
00:04:01any wood left for us, it will only be a greek
00:04:05forest here again,
00:04:09the farmers on the part say they practice
00:04:11agroforestry, they claim when the loggers
00:04:15come, the fell giant trees right top
00:04:18of the coco farms, wiping out their
00:04:22of investments, we paid to the government and they also pay to the
00:04:26government, we paid the paramot ruler went to get a portion
00:04:29of the l. but when we want to harvest our coco, it is the
00:04:32government that harvest it,
00:04:34of and of they receive payment on
00:04:39of of that.
00:04:40of the amount paid for a ton is more than 13,
00:04:44this is because we still pay the office workers in the
00:04:47of ministry of
00:04:47agrigue.
00:05:04You know our work is different from the luggas and that may cause some
00:05:07ranker as our vocations are different. They deal in locks we
00:05:11plant coco. They may come to our plantation and call the coco trees
00:05:14and this may anger us,
00:05:17this is what may cause emity
00:05:19between,
00:05:23what i believe is that government should allocate a portion for us to plant our
00:05:27crop, so we are an area and the loggers are
00:05:31in another area, the people in this forest planting koko
00:05:35got their plantation from the land
00:05:37owners, there is no traspasser planting
00:05:41here, we fight now.
00:05:45We stop wherever our located boundary
00:05:47is,
00:05:51ibi
00:05:52to ma ti fun wa, ibẹ náà
00:05:54duro.
00:06:02With inadequate funding and manpower, the boundaries between legal
00:06:06extraction zones and protected surs have completely
00:06:10blurred. Corruption
00:06:14and unauthorized boundary expansions have left the forest
00:06:18vulnerable to a chaotic free for
00:06:20all. As loggers push deep into
00:06:24the core zone and farmers claim the under story,
00:06:28the forest elephants find their habitat fragmented into
00:06:31unleevable patches, stripped their food and
00:06:34pathways, so the elephants strike
00:06:37back. In
00:06:412018, conflict became deadly in Itasin, a
00:06:45surrounding
00:06:45community,
00:06:57but on the front line is a small team of nigerian conservation
00:07:01foundations rangers who patrol the thousands of hectares,
00:07:05many the footpath or track you are
00:07:08seeing are not established by h, they actually
00:07:12elephant. to road, so any connection you see
00:07:16like this, no that
00:07:16it is elephant those all those
00:07:19parts, so we are right at the middle
00:07:23the their habitat, we just over
00:07:26dozen rangers covering hundreds of square kilometers,
00:07:30almost thin green line is heavily outmarched, the
00:07:34phase armed loggers and hostile farming communities with
00:07:38minimal protective gear and questionable legal backing from
00:07:42local court protected area is
00:07:45not like a zoological guardian where the
00:07:49wildlife are kept inside enclosure so they are
00:07:53moving on their free uh within their free
00:07:56habitat so so the possibility of wildlife
00:08:00encounters often arrive they
00:08:03might come by come by dangerous
00:08:07animal that may want to um
00:08:10charge at them. and
00:08:14um that also put their life at
00:08:18risk, also uh rangers work
00:08:21a rugged terrain, they have
00:08:24to walk long
00:08:27distance every day, they
00:08:30have to um um
00:08:33cover um a specific
00:08:37um area you
00:08:39know during that daily patrol. less
00:08:43the number of rivers, the
00:08:47hills, they have to
00:08:51uh, other obstacles the they have
00:08:54to overcome, so those
00:08:58are some of those problems
00:09:02and also it doesn't matter what the weather says
00:09:06once they are in the forest when every rain
00:09:09comes they still have to you know because even 'there's no way
00:09:13to hide
00:09:14you inside the rain uh so regardless of
00:09:18whether so they work in harsh weather
00:09:21you know to complete their
00:09:24assignments. the greatest paradox of
00:09:28m lies in its administrative structure managed
00:09:31under draw mandate by the state government part the forester
00:09:35licensed for commercial team concessions
00:09:39while the inner core is meant to be a strict'. protected
00:09:43conservation zone,
00:09:46without clearly defined physical boundaries, the line between legal
00:09:50economy and environmental crime has completely
00:09:54blurred, migrant farmers
00:09:58move into the fertile soils the reserve because they lack
00:10:01formal land rights, they build temporary
00:10:05settlements which are reported to be more than 70
00:10:08currently, constantly clearing deeper into the elephant
00:10:12habit. to avoid
00:10:13detection, despite the relentless
00:10:17pressures, remains a place of profound
00:10:20resilience, thanks to the relentless
00:10:25poach has turned rangers patrols, there has not been a single
00:10:28recorded incident of elephant poaching in the reserve for
00:10:32over 10 years, but many points that the task ahead
00:10:36is stuck and the Nigerian Conservation Foundation knows the
00:10:40challenges too well. The protected forests
00:10:44across the country are not peaceful sentuaries at the moment. They
00:10:48are active battlegrounds over the past three decades.
00:10:52The country has lost nearly all of its primary. rest cover,
00:10:56falling victim to a multi-billion nara black market driven by
00:10:59timber trafficking, illegal mining and unregulated
00:11:03proaching. for the men and women
00:11:06taxed with defending nigeria's biodiversity,
00:11:09leadership is measured not in corporate board rooms, but in
00:11:13survival. the line between environmental preservation and
00:11:17national security has completely
00:11:20vanished. this highlights the
00:11:23core challenge. conservation leadership in Nigeria, which
00:11:27experts summarize as institutional bottleneck, while the
00:11:31Nigerian Conservation Foundation pushes for landscape
00:11:34restoration in all the areas it operates across the country,
00:11:38state governments have historically been slow to finalize and
00:11:42enforce upgraded forest bills, now the foundation is shifting
00:11:46its leadership strategy to bring massive political weight
00:11:50to the table. We're also trying to replicate LCC in other parts the
00:11:54country. already have a large expanse of land in Abuja, we're trying to
00:11:58finalize the paperwork for that, because I think that also is very
00:12:01attractive, LCC is very attractive, a lot of people who don't know
00:12:05NCF, when you say, oh, I'm in NCF or I'm a chairman
00:12:09of NCF, they look a
00:12:10bit confused, but the moment you say lucky conservation, oh, their faces light
00:12:14up and they understand, so we realize that we need to replicate this more, it's
00:12:18also a real hands-on way of people seeing
00:12:22what's the, you know, what's the benefit? in
00:12:25conservation, in having a green
00:12:27space.
00:12:35Nigeria stands a razer of thin ecological tipping
00:12:39point with over 90% of its original rain
00:12:42forest already degraded. The country's reach biodiversity
00:12:46faces an existential threat from illegal login, urban
00:12:50proal and climate
00:12:52instability.
00:12:56For decades, the battle to protect these vanishing
00:12:59ecosystems has been fort in isolated
00:13:03silos. Non-profits lacked political muscle,
00:13:07governments lacked continuity, but in
00:13:09mid-2026, environmentalists say there is now
00:13:13seismic shift in leadership, which they believe
00:13:17may rewrite the player book.
00:13:21After a quarter century of dedicated service, conservation.
00:13:25pattract chief Philippedu stepped down as president the board
00:13:29of trustees and in his place the Nigerian Conservation
00:13:32Foundation appointed a man intimately familiar with
00:13:36the highest corridors of power former vice president professor
00:13:40Yami Oshibaju and I think is even
00:13:44more uh remarkable that
00:13:47uh chiifyodu as well as several others
00:13:51including uh the
00:13:54who
00:14:12were the initial thought leaders and
00:14:16founders the NCF, I
00:14:19think that that was a generation of visionary
00:14:23Nigerians who somehow... so many years
00:14:26ago, saw the importance of
00:14:29environmental conservation, of
00:14:32biodiversity, long, long before climate change
00:14:35ever became the issue that
00:14:38it is today, and so I think that they deserve
00:14:42our commendation, they deserve our
00:14:45thanks, because uh, but for them,
00:14:49perhaps would not have the foundations that this country
00:14:53has been able to lay. for climate action
00:14:57would never have belaid, we are way ahead of several other
00:15:01countries the world, way way ahead on account the
00:15:04vision these gentlemen in those early
00:15:08days.
00:15:15the day begins with news gathering and research. we need to confirm the
00:15:18story,
00:15:22directors as well as policy maker. from the
00:15:25business districts to the corporate, the policies, actions and
00:15:29even inactions of both the fiscal and the monetary
00:15:33authorities make impact. 90% of Nigeria's
00:15:36economy is in formal sector, just like this market, and take for
00:15:40example, they're impacted by government policies like inflation
00:15:44rates, prices, keep going
00:15:47up, well trading
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00:16:01weekday, business morning and business
00:16:05incorporated only on channels
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00:16:25headlines from around the world with in-depth discussions that
00:16:29help you understand the world we live in. don't be in the
00:16:33dark. catch us weekdays at 5:30 p.m.
00:16:41the 2025 vice to 2030 on channels president
00:16:43television as from 2015 to 2023, professor
00:16:47shimbajo wasn't just a politician, he was the architect of
00:16:50Nigeria's Net Zero 2060 economic
00:16:53blueprint, by taking the ham the
00:16:57country's premier environmental non-governmental
00:17:00organization, he bridges the historic gap between
00:17:04high-level state governance and grassroot ecosystem. them
00:17:07preservation. Professor Oshimbajo's leadership
00:17:11marks deliberate generational pivot for the NCF,
00:17:15while honoring pioneering founders like Chief SLAju, he
00:17:19has explicitly stated that the foundation's next phase
00:17:23relies on the enthusiastic support of young
00:17:26Nigerians by senturing youth in the NCF's
00:17:29agenda, the foundation aims to convert youth climate
00:17:33anxiety into structured green jobs ranging
00:17:37from urban circular economy startups to rural forest
00:17:41restoration collectives under the green recovery nigeria
00:17:44program. one the key issues of course is
00:17:47how to address biodiversity
00:17:51issues. we need to have a
00:17:55better plan, especially for biodiversity. we need to take
00:17:58advantage also of climate
00:18:02change. climate change offers
00:18:04some some opportunity. is that we
00:18:08have to take advantage of, one of those is climate positive
00:18:11growth, the notion
00:18:15that using renewable energy, which
00:18:19we have in abundance, we can actually advance our
00:18:22economic objectives, much more speedily, create more jobs
00:18:26and create more opportunities, so I i think that we're going to focus
00:18:30a great deal on the development
00:18:34opportunities that climate change offers, the jobs of
00:18:37because the new opportunities it offers, the
00:18:41great visters that it opens up, especially for
00:18:45the generation, for this younger generation, I think there is
00:18:49great opportunity, there is great hope. Nigeria's
00:18:53biggest conservation challenge has never been a lack of
00:18:56ideas. It has been said that is been a bottleneck in
00:19:00enforcement. Under professor Oshimbaj's leadership, the
00:19:04NCF says its first major target is transfer.
00:19:07conservation from a charitable hobby into a core economic
00:19:11driver to see new phase of conservation, because
00:19:15why the we are going to see lot more younger
00:19:19people being part of this move and
00:19:23why would they do that, because they
00:19:26understand now that it's not just about protect the
00:19:30ocean or the forest, but it's actually the
00:19:34infrastructure on which their generation we builts and so except the... young
00:19:37people have buyin into it, they have to see that it
00:19:41is for them, not so much for us and with that,
00:19:45I know that there be an improvement in the behavior,
00:19:49there will be a change in the attitude and the mindsets and the
00:19:53culture towards conservation, because yes we need funding,
00:19:57because lot of what we need to do require funding, but then there is lot of
00:20:00money also in that space, right? now we
00:20:04are um in the NCF is working with federal. meant
00:20:07to um to have a survey and have a proper
00:20:11data the value of our you know of our forests and all all of
00:20:15our college that we have so we know the true value and we are able
00:20:19to
00:20:19you know um have you proper data and if these young people are part
00:20:23of what we are doing then we are sure that the funding will come that
00:20:27is required to do what needs to be done because they would also have
00:20:31the right attitude and culture and behavior towards protecting their
00:20:35own it's not money alone that's the problem,
00:20:39that but solves the mindset and the behavior. The NCF enters its
00:20:42next chapter with a highly visible advocate
00:20:46capable of elevating conservation
00:20:48to matter of national. security and economic strategy
00:20:52by combining chief asiodu's institutional foundation with
00:20:56professor oshinbajo's expertise in global climate diplomacy
00:21:00and national governance. experts say Nigeria's conservation
00:21:03movement is positioning itself to be more technologically
00:21:07advanced, financially sustainable and politically
00:21:11influential. but I'm very optimistic and I'm
00:21:15optimistic because uh money will follow
00:21:17ideas, money will fall. commitment, it do follow
00:21:21dedication, and I think we have
00:21:23all of that, we have the ideas, we have the dedication, we have the commitment, so we expect that the
00:21:27money will come, I'm not unduly worried about about
00:21:31that, I'm
00:21:33you know, because I think that if you are committed to
00:21:36cause, and and there are so many
00:21:38sources of of resources to do this one, there
00:21:42are so many sources of resources, and again we are not really looking
00:21:46for hard cash, you are looking for collaboration,
00:21:50for co-travelers, working with co-travelers who may have the
00:21:54resources that you don't have, so it's not necessarily we're not building a
00:21:57fund,
00:21:58you see what i mean, what we're doing is seeking collaborators, people who
00:22:01are going the same pathway as as we are, and we're
00:22:05trying to work together with them, and there are so many all over the world, this is an
00:22:09international alliance, a global alliance of people
00:22:13a global coalitions, people who are doing exactly the same
00:22:17sort of work, and that has been the case since the foundation. of
00:22:20this uh this foundation the NCM, so we are
00:22:24not unduly worried about
00:22:25resources. Under these new
00:22:29leadership era, the NCF is heavily
00:22:32investing in digital technology to modernize field
00:22:36operations across Nigeria. The foundation is rolling out
00:22:39specialized tracking systems designed to monitor project
00:22:43stages, manage outstanding fronts and oversee field
00:22:47officers in real time. This technological
00:22:51modernization, the say will directly back the
00:22:54protection of 58 endangered species, they
00:22:58say it provides better intelligence for rangers defending
00:23:02critically threatened habitats. As at
00:23:06NCF, we deal with lot of partners, we we're conducting lot of
00:23:10projects all over the country, and so in our
00:23:13strategic action plan that we commenced last year, we agreed
00:23:17and decided to invest more in technology so that... by click of a button
00:23:21we can say at what stage each project is, who are the field officers
00:23:25in charge, what was the aim the project, how far have we
00:23:28covered, what is left, what is the outstanding balance on the funds that we're
00:23:32given, do we have any challenges that we want the partners to
00:23:36to meet you know and so on, so we've we're deploying technology,
00:23:40we've invested heavily in technology and the investment is going to continue over the next
00:23:44five years and we charge other NGOs at all, not
00:23:48only in the environment space. be able to, mean we all know that AI
00:23:51technology is available, mean you can use it for good, you can use
00:23:55it for mischief, but there's a lot of good, lot of benefit in
00:23:58it, with renew strategic
00:24:02direction, measurable conservation impact and a historic
00:24:06transition in leadership, the Nigerian Conservation Foundation says it
00:24:10enters its next chapter with confidence building on
00:24:13decades of service while remaining steadfast in its mission
00:24:17to protect Nigeria's natural heritage, for present and future
00:24:21generations, environmental challenges confronting Nigeria
00:24:25remain significant, but experts say so to are
00:24:29the opportunities to build resilient landscapes, restore
00:24:32ecosystems, strengthen livelihoods and inspire a
00:24:36new generation of environmental leaders. Achieving these
00:24:40outcomes will require both leadership, strong partnerships,
00:24:44sustained investment and collective action across every
00:24:47sector of society. "NCF is
00:24:51not is not working alone and you cannot work
00:24:55alone, this is a global alliance, this
00:24:58is a global coalition, you're working with everyone who is interested in
00:25:01the same things, with government, with civil society, with
00:25:05practitioners in this field, and as I said, the important thing is to
00:25:09look at the opportunities that climate action
00:25:13and and the environmental action present, there are very many
00:25:16opportunities presented, I think that if you look at the opportunity. is even
00:25:20even the opportunities that are created by
00:25:23maintaining uh the biodiversity and by
00:25:27the various aspects of climate action that we
00:25:30think we can actually participate in, the opportunities are
00:25:34huge.
00:30:28Hello, welcome to news track, I'm Lady Williams and these are the stories we're tracking.
00:30:32This hour begin with security mart is now where operatives the department
00:30:36of state services have arrested three more suspects allegedly linked to
00:30:40the kidnapping of dean of agriculture at NASA state
00:30:44university professor Samuel according
00:30:47to security source the suspects were reportedly arrested on
00:30:51Friday night a local bruffle in Mararaban Akunza
00:30:55along the Lafia Makadi highway. Professor Kuncebow was abdocted
00:30:59by Gund men