I will employ a poetic licence, coining and expanding the original title of A. Babalola’s timeless poem, “Salute to the Elephant”. I’m always thrilled and tamed by the Elephant, not only for what its portends, but also due to the potent wordings of Babalola, that simply reinforces my fears and admiration for the monstrous mammal, who carries about a hill of itself, wherever it traverses.
A recent presentation by Mr. Arthur Sniegon, on his wildlife animal rescue and rehabilitation work in Cameroon, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, and another short stint at Okomu National Park, in Edo State, Nigeria, however, informs this piece.
Sniegon is a practical nature conservationist, animal care-giver, and Czech nationality, with his innovative work in Africa. His endeared work might have motivated a nature-friendly Abuja Czech Embassy to host it to a wide range of conservationists – from the diplomatic missions, civil society groups, the academia, media and the general public.
The exhibition was held, recently, to a crowded gathering within the Kolanut Gallery of the highbrow Asokoro District, Abuja, the Nigerian capital and seat of presidential power.
Sniegon did justice to the narrating of his recovery work on the elephant and the hippopotamus, the amphibious ‘elephant underneath the water’. Added were accounts of small grants and micro business activities in park-bearing local communities around Africa.
His work on elephant excited all the most, with resounded ovations.
How exactly old Arthur Sniegon was didn’t seem to count. Interestingly, the Indians would say that taming the elephant has nothing to do with the age of the tamer, as his physical strength is nothing to the elephant.
”A hunter’s boast at home is not often repeated in the jungle, before the elephant”. Once upon time, this writer, when he was in the age of boom of Arthur Sniegon, was a hunter of lesser games, not the elephant. That was before he had for long been converted to animal lovers. On two different expeditions, he and his gun had scampered to refuge, as he sighted small herds of the “ivory monsters”.
It is most interesting that the rescue and rehabilitation of “Aigbabo”, an elephant calf, that got stranded in the buffers of the Okomu National Park, in Edo State, even though was the last to be mentioned, in the Czech Embassy’s event, was most thrilling.
Of those who had witnessed the ‘king’ at closed range in the jungles, solitary confinement, or in still and motion pictures, there is hardly none who will not capsize to the immense strength, majesty, and fierce power of the elephant
I must confirm. It is not only the hunter’s chant (ìjálá) of the Babalola’s Yoruba tribe of Nigeria, that literarily highlights the glory of the “Ugborhirhi”, an Edo personification for the awe inspiring monster, with the mortal footprints that gather the rain water for other animals of the jungle, to drink.
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The Edo people of Nigeria also have its robust worldview – the realities and myths of the elephant, which, when published, could mesmerize the readers.
If one must hunt or monitor the ‘Ajanaku’ or ‘Izozo’, a Yoruba or Edo epithet for its innate wandering, itinerary must be his companion. It is not farfetch, therefore, that Arthur Sniegon had had to be itinerant and vigilant to cope with his rigorous activities.
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, recognizes the existence of three kinds of elephant living species: the African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana), the African forest elephant (L. cyclotis), and the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus).
But, inclinations are that the forest, because it has different habitats, could also have different elephant species, thus fueling the argument that the Guinea lowland rainforest, that constitutes the Okomu habitat, could have its distinct rainforest elephant species (Loxodonta Africana cyclotis), and other faunas that supposedly mark its uniqueness.
Actually, it is the uniqueness of the Okomu elephant, that makes it one of its two flagship animals of ‘endemism’, that render Okomu National Park thick and famous.
Being the first fauna of Okomu that should define the park’s size and comfortable wandering range, the Okomu elephant had been a specimen or mascot for advocating land extension to boost the existing park’s designate land of 200 sq km, which is by far the smallest in size amongst Nigeria’s national parks.
No thanks to the scrambling for more land areas from the its original designate land expansions and buffers, that had been grabbed by an adjoining major oil palm company. The intensed agitation for the company to vacate the original land to extend the park, was fueled by the former government of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, that officially revoked about 8,000 hectares to give the park a relief. But the revocation order was flouted.
It is the original wandering range of the elephants, which had been grabbed and replaced with oil palm trees that some elephants, like ‘Aigbabo’ still take as home.
In 2019, I led a global campaign against the Okomu Oil Palm Company PLC, over an elephant calf, which its worker had attacked with cutlasses and cudgels, in their adjoining plantation in the park’s buffers. After the death of the calf, some other elephants were rescued from artificial pits dug by the company’s bulldozers in their plantation.
But, how many times do the elephant calves, which give hope to increase of its scanty population, have to be stranded and endangered in artificial plantation on a vast land that was their aboriginal home? Does the world not risk the extinction of the last herds, said to exist in Okomu National Park?
The Dr. Ibrahim Goni led National Park Service (NPS), and African Nature Investors (ANI) Foundation, headed by Conservationist Tunde Morakinyo, certainly gets the accolades for the great collaborating work, which is rescuing Okomu Park, with its elephants from the poachers’ plundering. Same with collaborating efforts of both in Gashaka Gumti Nation Park, located in Nigeria’s Taraba State.
Arthur Sniegon, who may have been encouraged by the ‘non-state actor’s intervention’ drives by ANI Foundation, had in the Abuja event, commended NPS and ANI.
It’s noteworthy that the Czech Republic, with 27 Protected Landscape Areas, 4 National Parks, and other 800 small scale protected areas, has it Embassy in Nigeria, already supporting beekeeping in Gashaka-Gumti, through small grants by the Czech Aid.
The Embassy of the of the landlock country of Central Europe, is said to be exploring the possibilities of further support for conservation and sustainable development projects in Nigeria. These are rare diplomatic examples!
The ernestness of such interventions by her Abuja diplomatic mission, was evident in the speech at the occasion, by a representative of the Czech Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Tomáš Výprachtický.
The event was mainly organized by Ondřej Neuschl, Cultural Officer, and Mrs. Marie Nwayanwu, a keen conservationist, Czech national and a long serving officer of the embassy, who is its Economic Counsellor.
