THE United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has launched the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC) Assessment in Nigeria.
The event, which held in Abuja on Tuesday, April 18, was attended by the UNODC Country Representative on the occasion of the ICCWC Toolkit High-level Launch, the Minister of Environment, Head of UNODC Global programme on Crimes that Affect the Environment, Representatives from United Kingdom, the United States and Germany, among others.
Speaking at the event, UNODC country representative Oliver Stope explained that environmental degradation has reached alarming levels in Nigeria.
He noted that Nigeria has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world, adding that the country lost 141kha of humid primary forest, equivalent of 14 per cent of its total tree cover, between 2002 and 2023.
“Excessive, unsustainable and mostly illegal extraction threatens the livelihoods of local communities as well as of species who called these woods their home. Wildlife is not only threatened by the continuous shrinking of their habitat but also by professional poachers as well as local hunters,” he said.
According to him, organised criminal trade of wildlife and forest products through Nigerian ports has created a threat to biodiversity across the entire region.
Stope also affirmed that none of the challenges have gone unobserved by the Nigeria government and the international community, stressing that “the 2018 CITES ban on the international trade of Nigerian Rosewood constitutes the most prominent measure taken at the international level, the Government of Nigeria has taken several steps in particular since 2020 to counter this trend”.
“The adoption of the first National Strategy to Combat Wildlife and Forest Crime, the recent establishment of the Wildlife Enforcement Task Force as well as the ongoing efforts to review the legislative framework and to build the capacity of the criminal justice system to tackle wildlife and forest crime – all constitute important initiatives.”
Stope further stated that all the efforts have started to bear some fruits, in particular as concerns the ability of Nigerian law enforcement to seize illegally traded wildlife and forest products.
“However, these efforts have not yet been able to reverse the trend of excessive illegal extraction or to put an end to the role of Nigeria as a regional hub for the illegal trade in wildlife and forest products.
“International cooperation with both source and destination countries would seem to constitute another largely untapped potential game changer. At present, it remains difficult to avoid the general impression that wildlife and forest crime are a low risk high reward criminal market. So exactly the kind of criminal market that organized crime is scouting for.”
The UNODC Country representative noted that “a much more thorough analysis is required in order to provide the Government as well as its international partners with the necessary insights to understand the most relevant shortcomings and to address them.”
“At UNODC, we are therefore particularly pleased to be joining you today for the launch of the ICCWC Toolkit Assessment. We do so together with our partners in the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime, composed of the CITES Secretariat, INTERPOL, the World Customs Organization, and the World Bank, as well as with the supporters of our ongoing work in Nigeria, namely the Governments of Germany, the United States and the European Union.
“To date, this Toolkit has assisted 20 governments around the globe in conducting comprehensive analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of their national preventive and criminal justice responses to wildlife and forest crime,” he added.
Also speaking at the event, the Minister of Environment Mohammed H. Abdullahi said the toolkit represents a complete tool needed to drive and achieve Nigeria’s vision, mission, and goals as well as a global deal for nature.
He added that it will directly contribute to what is needed to reverse the negative trend in the country.
“The reverberating but appalling warning in the landmark InterGovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), 2019 Global Assessment Report that about one million species are threatened with extinction, and many within decades, is instructive. The political will and the collaborative actions that are being taken today are galvanized by this IPBES warning.
“Let me commend the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC) in its collaborative effort via its five inter-governmental organizations in strengthening criminal justice systems and providing coordinated support at national, regional, and international levels to combat wildlife and forest crime.”
He, therefore, applauded the partner agencies for coming together to help Nigeria end wildlife crime..
Usman Mustapha is a solution journalist with International Centre for Investigative Reporting. You can easily reach him via: [email protected]. He tweets @UsmanMustapha_M