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COOU Journal of Arts and Humanities (CJAH) Vol. 5 No. 3, 2020

OBINTA, REMIJIUS FRIDAY PhD
Department of History

Obafemi Awolowo University
Ile-Ife, Nigeria 

rfobinta@oauife.edu.ng +234813 847 3517 

PROBLEMS OF SUSTAINABLE FOREST 
MANAGEMENT IN NIGERIA SINCE THE COLONIAL TIMES: 

A HISTORICAL ANALYSIS

Abstract 
This paper argued that certain gaps existed between the colonial governments' responses to, 
and handling of forest management challenges and that of the post-independence 
governments in Nigeria. It held further that these gaps negatively impacted on the effective 
forest resources management in the post-independence years. The paper consulted both 
relevant primary and secondary data. Primary data were retrieved from the National 
Archives, Ibadan while secondary sources were obtained from relevant existing literature on 
the problems of forest management in Nigeria. The paper was anchored on the dependency 
theory approach wherein the African colonial dependencies were adapted to serves the 
interests of the metropolitan economies in Europe over and above the colonies themselves. It 
found that forestry and forest reservation, as practised today, was established by the colonial 
authorities in Nigeria. It further found that the colonial forest services were strictly guided by 
policies, practices, laws and regulations that combined to ensure the sustainability of the 
forest resources management. It also uncovered that the Nigerian government, at 
independence, inherited a well consolidated forest service. It found as well that the Nigerian 
government, soon after independence, gradually but steadily abandoned many of those factors 
that had allowed for sustainable forest management in colonial Nigeria. Another finding was 
that some new challenges emerged in the post-independence period to further menace 
sustainable forest management. The paper concluded that the threat to the sustainability of 
forest resources management in Nigeria in the recent times resulted from the failure of the 
Nigerian governments to harness the factors that enabled sustainable forest management 
under colonial government and their failure to tackle the new challenges that faced forest 
management in recent times.

Keywords: Forest, Resources, Sustainable, Colonial, Post-Colonial Nigeria.

Introduction
The apprehension today about the sustainability of forest resources in the face of excessive 
logging and deforestation without sufficient reforestation was not a new one. That was exactly 
the same concern that had predisposed the British colonial authorities in Nigeria to introduce 
modern forestry and constitute government forest reserves to guarantee sustainability. Back in 
the 1880s and 1890s in the Lagos Colonial territory and its hinterland (i.e. Yorubaland), 
mahogany was about the only timber species selectively demanded by the European buyers of 
raw logs (Timber of Yorubaland, 1891). This was due to lack of information on other types of 
timber available in Nigerian forests as at then.



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There was the indiscriminate harvesting of woods as fuel for the charcoal-powered 
locomotive engines of the newly introduced railways (Crowder, 1976). There was the 
widespread clearing of forests for the cultivation of cocoa newly introduced to Nigeria about 
the 1890s. There was also the search for and tapping of wild rubber trees in the forests for sale 
to the European buyers at the coast (Omosini, 1979). Finally, there was the clearing of new 
forests annually for the shifting cultivation of other arable crops as practised in the pre-
colonial times. All of these factors just identified put so much strain on the forests that made 
government control imperative. This paper, therefore, traced the history of the efforts of the 
successive governments (from the colonial to the post-colonial) in managing forest resources 
in the face of these challenges.

Historical Background to Forestry in Nigeria: Alfred Moloney as Pioneer of Modern 
Forestry in the Lagos Colony and Protectorate
Alfred Moloney, upon becoming the governor of Lagos Colony and Protectorate in 1886, took 
certain administrative steps (between 1889 and 1891) that later led to the establishment of 
modern forestry in the colony (Omosini, 1975). It should be remarked here that before 1886, 
Nigeria was administered as part of the Gold Coast, with a Lieutenant Governor responsible to 
Accra. The first step he took as governor to manage forest challenges was the creation of the 
forestry department in 1889. He also endeavoured to create sufficient awareness in Britain 
about the abundant availability of numerous species of valuable timber resources in his 
colonial territory and the profitability of Britain investing in such an enterprise. By the same 
token, he also hinted at the availability of wild rubber resources in the territory as well as the 
viability of introducing another variety of rubber from India which was already thriving there. 
At this period, both timber and coagulate latex (any fluid from tree convertible to rubber) were 
in high demand in Britain to meet furniture and vulcanising needs respectively.

Moloney had been corresponding with London on the feasibility of forestry and 
timber trade in Yorubaland as far back as 1884, two years before his appointment as governor 
of Lagos Colony and Protectorate. He sent correspondence to the Kew Gardens, London in 
form of feasibility study report emphasizing the fertility of the soil of Yorubaland, not only for 
arable farming, but also for timber cultivation. He even attached an appendage to the letter on 
Iroko wood (Chlorophora Excelsa) and how it thrived naturally and abundantly in Yorubaland 
(Timber of Yorubaland, 1891).

Moloney's ultimate objective was to persuade Britain to give its support and approval 
to his proposal to commence timber trade in Yorubaland and to organise forestry to ensure a 
permanent supply of the commodities in this trade.  The word 'Yorubaland' above referred to 
Lagos Colony and Protectorate which was the nucleus of what later became Nigeria. He was, 
himself, persuaded that once his home government became convinced about the feasibility 
and profitability of such a commercial venture, his dream of forestry and timber trade in the 
Lagos Colony would come true (Omosini, 1975). As a follow up on his earlier memorandum 
to London on the rich forest of Yorubaland, he sent a dispatch again to the Royal Gardens, 
Kew, in 1890. The purpose of that dispatch was to persuade the Director of the Royal Gardens 
to accept his proposal and assist, with his good offices, in convincing relevant parties in 
Britain that were capable of making the proposal to sail through. If that happened, he had 
hoped, it would lead to the commencement of timber trade in the Lagos Colony and 
Protectorate as well as the introduction of forestry laws to secure such trade on a permanent 
basis.  



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COOU Journal of Arts and Humanities (CJAH) Vol. 5 No. 3, 2020

In his bid to further convince the colonial office in London, through the Royal Gardens, Kew, 
Moloney attached to his letter, a circular which he had issued in the Lagos Colony and 
Protectorate on the feasibility of timber trade. In it he had drawn attention to the timber of 
Yorubaland, which he described as valuable and requested the samples of these timbers be 
secured, examined and reported upon by experts in Britain for their feasibility and 
marketability. He also gave information on the availability of a large number of varieties of 
such timbers in the immediate hinterland of the Lagos Colony and the grand network of inland 
waterways to aid their evacuation. He informed further that all that was needed for a thriving 
commerce in these timbers to commence in Europe was the acquisition of a more complete 
knowledge of their commercial values and the best condition for shipping them to Europe. 
Modern forestry and forest reservation that resulted from the awareness creation served to 
commodify the forests and their resources which were natural resources not conceived as such 
by the indigenous people (Segall, 2006).

Forest Management in Nigeria under Colonial Rule, 1900-1960 
The pioneering efforts of Alfred Moloney did pay off shortly after he had left the Lagos Colony 
and Protectorate on transfer. The British colonial office in London soon began to show more 
favourable dispositions towards the establishment of modern forest management system in 
their Nigerian colonial dependency. Forestry Department was created in the country in 1889 
(Unwin, 1918). After much bilateral engagements and dialogues between the Colonial 
Governor and African Chiefs (in this case, the Olubadan-and-Council) the first forest reserve 
in Nigeria, Mamu Forest Reserve, Ibadan, was created in 1899 (Forestry Ordinance of 
Nigeria, 1916). The following year, 1900, the second forest reserve, Olokemeji Forest 
Reserve, Abeokuta was created. From this time forward, forest reserves were created in many 
places across Nigeria by the colonial governments. Once these reserves were created, the 
immediate concern of the colonial administrators consisted in adopting the best possible 
strategies for managing these reserves sustainably. Some of the methods adopted to manage 
the colonial forest services were discussed in this section.

Once a few forest reserves were constituted in the Lagos Colony and Protectorate, the 
colonial government came up with methods and techniques which, in their view, would assure 
the sustainability of both the forest reserves and the numerous resources that they harboured. 
Even though many of these forests already had large stocks of assorted indigenous timber 
resources before they were reserved, the sheer rate of annual timber harvesting warranted 
planned methods of regeneration. There were two ways to this namely, natural regeneration 
and artificial regeneration. Natural regeneration consisted in allowing the forest trees to 
regrow by themselves over many years after the cutting of the trees. This method obviously 
could not match the rate of annual harvest by mostly expatriate timber extraction companies to 
whom the governments gave annual harvesting concessions in exchange for the payment of 
royalties. 

The second type of regeneration was known as artificial regeneration. This referred to 
the different ways of manually replanting the clear-felled spaces inside the forest reserves with 
indigenous and exotic tree seedlings. The indigenous trees were those already growing wildly 
by themselves before the coming of the Europeans. The exotic species, on the other hand, were 
those mostly fast-growing timber species introduced from other countries into Nigerian 
forests by the colonial government. The purpose of these new species was to increase the 
number of merchantable timbers in European wood markets. The chief goal of the colonial 



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government was to establish a steady source of timber to meet the furniture needs of Europe. 
To this end, raw logs of assorted timber were regularly exported from Lagos and well-
maintained forest reserves were needed to help assure uninterrupted supplies of these essential 
commodities.

The government forestry departments played leading roles in forest management and 
regeneration. They maintained constant tree nursery beds from where tree seedlings were 
given to timber contractors to replace the mature timbers they felled. It was so organised that 
only trees of the same species replaced each other. An Iroko tree seedling could not replace 
Obeche and so on. This was a regeneration policy aimed at preventing species extinction of any 
given timber type. Also, by putting the responsibility of replanting harvested forest trees on the 
timber contractors, the colonial administrators were able to lighten the burdens of doing it on 
the various forestry departments. The departments only needed to provide the appropriate 
seedlings and monitor the correct planting of same.

Another effective forest regeneration method was the Taungya farming system. The 
Taungya system was a form of government-community partnership in forest regeneration 
(Hellermann, 2007). It was an arrangement whereby the government allocated portions or 
open spaces inside forest reserves, from where timber had just been harvested, to farmers upon 
request. Such applicants were expected to plant only food crops on such farmlands in addition 
to forest tree seedlings allocated to them by the forestry departments. The goal was that the 
farmers should enjoy farming on such fertile lands for the estimated space of five to six years 
during which the canopies of the planted trees would have covered enough to discourage 
further farming. Once this happened, such farmers were expected to apply for fresh clear-
felled space inside the reserve for a repeat of the above process. The Taungya farming system 
did benefit the people and the government in two different ways. It helped the government to 
ensure timely regeneration of the forest reserves without bearing the costs of doing so. It also 
helped to provide steady portions of fertile arable lands to farmers where they could grow food 
crops on a rotational basis.

The use of the forest action plan was about the most effective method that helped the 
Nigerian colonial government to manage their forest reserves sustainably (Obinta, 2016). The 
forest action plan was a document prepared annually by the forestry department strictly 
according to which all timber harvesting would be undertaken in a given forest reserve. It was 
an offence to carry out any form of harvest of trees without recourse to this document. This 
document stipulated the size and girth of trees that could be cut, the replanting of the exact tree 
seedlings to replace the ones felled as well as the annual allowable cut. 

The annual allowable cut was the number of timbers that could possibly be cut from a 
given forest reserve beyond which any further harvest was considered an offence. With the 
forest action plan, it was possible to undertake purposive harvesting (Amgbasim, 2012). 
Purposive harvesting was a method of clearing a large portion of already mature forest timber 
at once so as to make allowance for replanting of new ones. This type of large scale replanting 
was also known as plantation forestry and was considered necessary to make up for the high 
rate of annual timber harvesting (Roche, 1977). Strict observance the above measures in the 
management of their forest reserves was the secret of success of the Nigerian colonial forest 
services.

Forest; Management in Colonial and Post-colonial Nigeria Compared
Tracing the missing link in sound and sustainable forest management in Nigeria would warrant 



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COOU Journal of Arts and Humanities (CJAH) Vol. 5 No. 3, 2020

a comparative discussion of the forest management objectives and policy thrusts of the 
colonial forest service and that of the Post-colonial government. To begin with, the overriding 
colonial forest policy was that no forest management plan would ever work without first 
bringing the affected forest under reservation. The colonial authorities took this position based 
on their conclusion that the traditional land tenure system of shifting cultivation and annual 
burning of forests for cultivation was inimical to sustainable forest conservation. This was the 
philosophy behind the colonial forest conservation policy of reserving, at least, twenty-five 
per cent of the total land areas in Nigeria as forest reserves. This reservation benchmark was, 
however, not achieved as at 1960. Only about ten per cent of the forests were reserved at 
independence. The findings of this paper included that whereas nearly all the forest reserves in 
Nigeria were constituted and managed by the colonial administration, the post-colonial 
government only managed these reserves (Olatubosun, 2009).

The colonial government adopted a dual forest management system whereby the 
government managed forest reserves at the provincial level while the Native Administration 
managed their own forests at the local level. This came from their belief in shared forest 
management with the land owners (Wyatt-Smith, 1996). This enabled the indigenous land 
owners to participate in forest governance and the benefit-sharing. This dual management 
style was abolished by the Nigerian government shortly after independence. This made them 
forfeit the benefits of government-people participatory forest management (Elliot, 2002).  In 
the same vein, colonial authorities recognised indigenous land ownership of the reserved 
forest lands and paid the owners royalties annually. Post-colonial government, on the contrary, 
abrogated the indigenous ownership of forest lands and also ceased to pay them annual forest 
royalties (Azeez et al, 2011). It vested the land ownership on the respective state governors on 
behalf of the people.

Moreover, the colonial government managed their forests with carefully designed 
working plans that spelt out annual forest exploitation scheme that balance exploitation 
against regeneration. Forest departments in post-independence period had neglected the use of 
working plans in the management of their reserves. A study found that even as at 2011, the 
various forest departments had no working or management plans to manage the forests with 
(Fayenuwo et al, 2011). It also found that even the almost obsolete forestry policies and laws 
were only on paper and were rarely applied or enforced. The forest reserves were, therefore, at 
the mercy of forest poachers and other illegal forest users.

More importantly, the colonial forestry departments were actively and directly 
involved in the regeneration of exploited forest reserves. They carried out researches on 
scientific forest management as well as develop and manage nurseries from where forest tree 
seedlings were distributed for regeneration purposes. This aspect of colonial forest 
management was found to be seriously lacking in the post-independence forestry 
departments. The ready excuse had been a shortage of staff. 

However, this study found a lack of political will by the government to manage the 
forests sustainably to be more responsible. The emphasis was more on maximising 
revenue from the forests and minimising expenditure on same (Olaseni et al, 2004). What was 
more, the monies realised from the forest reserves were not made available to the forestry 
department but lodged in the state coffers from where it was deployed to also serve other 
purposes with only meagre sums left to manage the forests.

This inability of the post-independence forest departments to function effectively was 
accounted for by the fact that they were not adequately empowered by governments to perform 



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optimally. Under the colonial forest service, the forestry department was completely 
autonomous with the Chief Conservator of Forests as its national manager answerable only to 
the Head of State. The department was fully in charge of its revenue and expenditure. 
However, in the post-colonial Nigerian forest management, forestry department was never 
autonomous. It was, for a very long time subsumed under the Ministry of Agriculture and 
Natural Resources. It was only recently reassigned under the Ministry of Environment. In 
either case, chief conservator or director of forests (as the officer was recently designated) was 
answerable to the minister of either agriculture of environment. The autonomy needed for 
effective administration was, therefore, denied to a sector as important as forestry and natural 
resources. There was, nevertheless, an exception of Ogun State where there was an 
autonomous Ministry of Forestry. 

This inadequate empowerment of the Forestry Department, both administratively and 
in its fiscal operations were among the causal factors for its noticeable low performance after 
independence. The heavy deforestation that this poorly controlled logging gave rise to put the 
wildlife at risk (Lewis, 2009). It also threatened the entire forest ecosystem in the remaining 
forests in the country (Morris, 2010). Furthermore, the loss of forest cover equally occasioned 
the disappearance of many non-timber forest products that fetched much revenue in the past 
(Oriola: 2009, 13). There was also the challenge of overreliance on fuel wood by the rural poor 
as their major source of energy with its harmful effects on sustainable forest management 
(Enger and Smith: 2013, 9).

The study, finally, uncovered an entirely new challenge to the management of the forest 
reserves that was unknown during the colonial period. This had to do with armed security 
challenges in the forest reserves. Forest marauders were found to be very desperate and often 
illegally armed with dangerous firearms while inside the reserves. The forest guards, who were 
neither trained to use firearms nor equipped with same, were expected to arrest these armed 
forest thieves and bring them to town for prosecution. The forest poachers also mostly 
outnumbered the forest guards who were sometimes numbered from one to four covering a 
forest beat (Vassan, 2002). 

The various state governments in Nigeria, as at present, have had no answer to the 
armed security challenge in the reserves. Many forest administrators often advised the 
unarmed forest guards under their respective areas to observe their personal safety precautions 
while in the jungles with these dangerous timber dealers. Forestry officers in the Ogun State 
Ministry of Forestry, for instance, usually applied for and obtained armed police escorts 
whenever they had reasons to inspect their forest reserves. This made the forest policing 
system to be seriously impotent and often predisposed the forest guards to accept bribe offers 
from timber contractors and look away from their forest crimes. Failure to address this 
important matter impacted negatively on forest management given the central roles of the 
forest guards as the watchmen over forest resources (Vassan, 2002). This caused the 
government to lose revenue and made taking accurate forest inventory almost impossible.

Conclusion
This paper had examined and discussed the subject of forest resources management in Nigeria 
beginning from the colonial times. It found that the present concern for the sustainability of 
forest resources was very similar to the worry of the colonial authorities that led to the 
conservation of forest reserves in the early colonial period. It equally uncovered that colonial 
forest managers operated an inclusive dual forest management system which incorporated the 
local people in it while the post-independence government did not. It also found that colonial 



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COOU Journal of Arts and Humanities (CJAH) Vol. 5 No. 3, 2020

forest managers acknowledged indigenous land titles and paid landlords annual forest 
royalties while post-independence government abolished royalty payment and vested all 
powers related to lands on the governors of the respective states.

The paper further discovered that such colonial forest management techniques as the 
use of forest action plans, provision of tree seedlings, departmental supervision of forest 
regeneration and Taungya planting were either not applied or very poorly applied. It found that 
Nigerian government, after independence, concentrated more on forest revenue generation 
and less on regeneration of cleared forests. It found, finally, that Nigerian government, after 
independence, did not respond promptly and appropriately to the armed security challenges 
threatening the protection of forest resources. It concluded that the threat to the sustainability 
of forest resources management in Nigeria in the recent times resulted, in part, from the failure 
or inability of the Nigerian governments to adequately harness the factors that collectively 
enabled sustainable forest management under the colonial government as well as their failure 
to tackle the new armed security challenge that faced forest management in recent times. 

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Crowder, M. (1976). West Africa under colonial rule.London: Hutchinson & Co.
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