Nigeria is standing dangerously close to an ecological breaking point, and our greatest warning sign is already here: vultures have gone into functional extinction across the country. Their disappearance is not a symbolic loss; it is a public-health emergency. As their populations crash by up to 95%, rotting carcasses stay longer on the land, feral dog numbers rise, and diseases like rabies, anthrax and cholera spread faster. As environmentalist David Attenborough warned, “If we damage the natural world, we damage ourselves.” Nigeria is beginning to feel that truth.
Beyond vultures, dozens of silent guardians are sustaining the nation in ways most citizens never recognise. Honeybees, for instance, remain some of the strongest protectors of Nigeria’s food supply. Without bees, pollination of tomatoes, peppers, vegetables, melon, cashew, mango and countless crops would collapse. Every bee is an unpaid farmer, a small labourer standing between abundance and famine. Yet pesticides and rising heat are killing them in alarming numbers, threatening the heart of our food security.
In the wetlands, forests and grasslands, other unlikely heroes are at work. The African giant snail produces mucous used for wound healing, anti-inflammatory medicine and traditional treatments long known across Nigeria. The African giant pouched rat—used globally to detect landmines and tuberculosis; is living proof that nature provides technologies more advanced than many machines. Even termites, ants and earthworms, often dismissed as pests, are restoring soil fertility daily, keeping farmland alive in ways that no government programme has been able to replicate.
Nigeria’s forests owe their regeneration to animals that disperse seeds over long distances. Monkeys, chimpanzees, fruit bats and rodents carry seeds that later grow into iroko, mahogany and mango trees. Without them, forest recovery slows, erosion spreads and watershed systems weaken. As Wangari Maathai once said, “Nature is very unforgiving. If you destroy it, you cannot expect it to forgive you.” This is the silent truth shaping Nigeria’s environmental future.
Along our coasts, mangrove crabs protect the Niger Delta from erosion by aerating soils and stabilising mangrove roots. In our rivers, fish such as catfish and tilapia regulate ecosystems and support millions of livelihoods. Sea turtles, dolphins and sharks keep marine systems balanced. These animals perform billion-naira environmental services for free, yet they are perishing under pollution, overfishing and habitat destruction.
The list of Nigeria’s fifty guardians—from bees to butterflies, crabs to crocodiles, monkeys to elephants, snakes to swallows; is more than an inventory. It is a reminder that animals are the infrastructure behind our agriculture, clean water, climate stability and disease control. If these creatures stop their work for even a short period, Nigeria’s economy and survival systems would unravel. Our environmental crisis is not approaching; it is already here, hidden under the noise of politics and the pressure of economic hardship.
Nigeria must now choose whether to defend the animals that defend us or continue eating them to extinctions. Stronger wildlife laws, forest restoration, anti-poisoning campaigns, pollinator protection, coastal management, and public education are no longer optional. They are national survival strategies. As American biologist E.O. Wilson warned, “Destroying species is like tearing pages out of an unread book.” Nigeria has already torn out the chapter on vultures. We cannot afford to lose the rest.
– Inah Boniface Ocholi writes from Ayah – Igalamela/Odolu LGA, Kogi state.
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