At Okomu National Park in Nigeria’s southwestern Edo State, authorities have found a new approach to protect the forest from illegal logging and wildlife poachers: They’re hiring former loggers and poachers to patrol the park.
Africa Nature Investors (ANI), a Nigerian nongovernmental organization, took over management of Okomu in 2022. Since then, its rangers have arrested more than 200 illegal loggers and poachers.
“We will bring illegal hunting and logging to the smallest, barest minimum,” Peter Abanyam, ANI park director, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
By some estimates, Nigeria has lost 96% of its original forests. Illegal logging of tropical hardwoods has ties to transnational criminal syndicates, which can make millions of dollars a month by moving illegally cut logs between African forests and distant furniture factories, many of them in China.
The traffic in illicit logs fuels corruption among government officials and destabilizes communities when the lost forest cover leads to flooding and other environmental problems.
Many criminal groups involved in illegal logging also help terrorist organizations in Nigeria and elsewhere finance operations across Africa — either directly, by serving as middlemen, or indirectly, by selling protection to logging operations.
For communities struggling with economic hardship, however, the forest represents a ready source of quick cash.
“We would go into the forest, cut down logs and take them to Lagos just to have money,” James Leleghale Bekewei, a former logger who now commands ANI forest rangers, told AFP.
His life as a park ranger, however, is more reliable and more lucrative.
“I make more money as a ranger,” Bekewei said.
Before ANI began managing Okomu, it was common to see logging trucks lined up along the park’s access roads. As many as 50 trucks filled with illegal timber left the 24,000-hectare reserve every day, according to Abanyam.
Communities around Okomu report that illegal logging continues in the park, but now ANI rangers are on hand to intercept them. In 2025, rangers stopped two trucks leaving the park with illegal logs and confiscated their cargo.
At least one community group, the Concerned Sons and Daughters of Riverine Communities in Edo State, has called on authorities to investigate illegal logging in Okomu.
ANI’s goal, according to co-founder Tunde Morakinyo, is to help people who live near Okomu and other Nigerian parks to develop a long-term strategy for making a living without destroying the forest in the process.
“People are driven into logging and poaching through poverty,” Morakinyo told AFP. “If you take away these livelihoods, you must replace them with alternative livelihoods.”
So far, ANI has hired 30 rangers out of 300 applicants. Prospective rangers take tests to assess their physical strength and their moral integrity. They also are trained on human and environmental rights and weapons handling.
ANI also provides communities with interest-free microloans to help establish moneymaking operations such as a cassava flour mill one Okomu-area community built to support its residents.
Morakinyo told EnviroNews Nigeria that when communities prosper from their relationship with Okomu and other parks, it will persuade them to defend the forests.
“Our ambition is to have a park which is really well protected, surrounded by a ring of economically prosperous communities, who actively work with us to protect the park,” he said.
