This is the second and concluding part of last week’s thesis, as the above-named title of its first stanza so refers.
It’s a retrospective summation that the Edo State government played “Nero the Fiddle”, as the Ogba Zoo and Nature Park, Benin City, was consistently violated by land grabbers. Its once bountiful 750 acres (300 hectares) designate size, had gradually shrunk to a negligible area, yet to be determined by the state government.
All along, the government particularly failed to carry out a physical survey on its remnants, and also to undertake its eco-valuation. Government’s laxity had encouraged the grabbing of its land by the park’s adjoining local communities, as well as ceding it as booty, to top politicians of the two major political parties that have ruled the state in succession.
Also, the National Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), a subsidiary of NNPC, the country’s oil giant, had downplayed the implementation of a mandatory Environmental Impact Assessment (EAI)) study and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) task to the park, on whose original land NPDC’s sprawling headquarters is situated.
Government had failed to serve deterrence to all the violators, and to desilt the Ogba stream (that nurtures the park’s land) of sewage effluence usually emptied into it.
The matter had reached a complex peak when Everal Services Limited, a franchise holder, that agreed on terms of lease with government, over three decades ago, had finally “mustered the courage” to drag it to the High Court in Benin City, the state capital.
The grounds for litigation are failure by government to carry out the terms of arbitration judgement, made since November 3, 2016 about the same time Mr. Godwin Obaseki, the immediate-past governor, started and later ended his eight years double-tenure.
*About BENZOPA, the rare global “Nature’s Masterpiece”*
It is situated at Ogba, a hitherto serene outskirts on the Oko-Ogba outer reach of Airport Road, Benin City. The conservation enclave is also afflicted by the urban physical growth that has circled and endangered it.
BENZOPA is widely categorized by conservation doyens as “a valuable biodiversity hotspot”, and “vibrant environmental conservation research/ awareness center”. It is also referred to as the “last vestiges (leftovers) of a Guinea Lowland Rainforest” that is situated and ‘protected’ within an urban setting in Africa – maybe the last in the world!
*Memorable origins of BENZOPA*
In 1965, it was sliced from the former Ogba Forest Reserve; an appendage of the Niger Delta mangrove, which is world’s second largest. The region’s mangrove is also one of the few densest and richest, in biodiversity (plants and animal diversity in their natural forms).
Most of its flora and fauna are priceless, as emphasized by its rare biological classifications. Many wildlife species of BENZOPA are valuably named in some important global biodiversity catalogues, such as the Convention on International Trade on Endangered Wild Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES).
It is on record that the late Samuel Osaigbovo Ogbemudia, a pacesetting two-times governor of the state, pioneered the uplift of BENZOPA as a flagship Nigerian conservation and ecotourism project, that attracted the safari-loving Jomo Kenyatta, the late President of Kenya.
*BENZOPA hawks lots of attraction to humanity!*
Scholars and academic institutions take excursions there, from within and outside the country.
The enclave houses diverse old-growth trees of large girths, undergrowth and other creepers, which gives ambience and a canopy to faunas that wander in its semi-free range land. Most of its old enclosures had been brought back by Everal Services Limited that also constructed other new facilities.
BENZOPA, which is thronged by a cross generation of picnickers and other visitors, is said to host seasonal migratory bats, and ringed birds from the Nordic countries of Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Western Europe. It is a transit or destination to the “flying creatures without barriers”.
“Animals in captivity”, as with the “zoo genre”, may be critiqued by some conservationists, only as “symbolism presentation”. But that doesn’t mean that “faunas in enclosures” do not have many advantages. Animals in thick rainforest abode shy away from picnickers, who are often unhappy not sighting them. But the zoos bring humans closer to wild animal. Besides, BENZOPA practices animal breeding, which it donates to other zoos, and injects into the wild, in order to reduce extinction of wildlife species.
*In Edo, nature conservation radiates rich historical, tradition and spirituality.*
In Edo State, particularly its world second oldest kingdom of Benin, where BENZOPA is located, environmental conservation runs deep, and is replete in its rich history, culture and mysticism. For instance, “Ọ gbẹ ovbi igẹdu” is a metaphor for “the deflowering of a female virgin, as compared with the felling of a fledgling tree”. Also for faunas, a hunter would be punished if he killed pregnant or baby animals, because they increase the population, sustenance, and promotes endemism (of plants and animal species being native to and restricted to a habitat)
These and others are natural laws that enforce conservation, which could be referred to the continued use of life forms, thus guaranteeing man’s existence.
Interestingly, BENZOPA and Edo’s forest reserves that are now depleted were prehistoric jungles, subsequently regenerated with tree crops. For instance, successive Ọba (monarchs) of the famous Benin Kingdom, had carried out ‘Ugbo Ọba’, community-block farming that gave rise to its rainforests. The system was marshalled by the Ọbas, before and beyond the old kingdom, as again resumed by the Great Ọba Ewuare I (1441 – 1473).
*How Everal Services came to manage BENZOPA*
The park was active from pioneering stage, under management by the state government. Thereafter, in the era of Col Adamu Iyam, as military governor, he (Iyam), made the now unfortunate and famous public statement that; “a state which hardly feeds its people can’t be feeding animals in the zoo”. Henceforth, the decline and the rot set in, when BENZOPA’s edifices were vandalized – and its precious wildlife was poached.
With government ordering for its private management, Everal Services Ltd won the bid. So far so well, BENZOPA had been up and doing, with upgrade of its facilities, at humongous costs. Without government’s contributions, the supposedly “fully-protected” zoo and nature park had been “unprotected”.
The crux of the law suit is goaded by the public expectation for the court to resolve the arbitration stalemate, and other violations that threaten BENZOPA.
*Ex-Governor Obaseki’s unfriendliness to BENZOPA*
With Mr. Godwin Obaseki as governor, the woes of BEZOPA had tripled, and life became more unbearable for a mitigating Everal Services Limited. Obaseki, who was integral part of the state’s Executive Council, under Ex-Governor Adams Oshiomhole, which took the tough decision to resolve the problems of BENZOPA, was the same who encouraged it.
Obaseki, for the obvious reason, stopped the planned prosecution of the grabbers of BENZOPA, Okomu and Owan forest reserved lands respectively, which his then Attorney General and Justice Commissioner had already perfected.
A tricky Ex-Governor Obaseki, did a 360 degree turn to pay a private visit to BENZOPA’s management, with overtures for out-of-court settlement on the matter already due for hearings by the law court. Henceforth, the former governor shielded his top politicians, and refused to entertain further discussions on the settlement he initiated.
Governor Okpebholo, a Nature Lover, who could break the ice!
Before and after his election as governor, I had engaged him to mediate on the huge environmental problems confronting the state, particularly those of BENZOPA, Okomu National Park, and frivolous allocation of Edo forest reserves for vast plantation expansions, by the previous government.
But, Okpamakhin Community Initiative (OCI), an NGO, certainly keeps the faith with the Governor Okpebholo’s enthusiasm. OCI is advocating to see the problems resolved. That is why it had written twice, appealing to him to be on the same page with the public, by doing the needful to resolve the matter. Pronto!