Chief Obafemi Awolowo Is The Last President That Cared About Forestry In Nigeria – Samuel Oluwalana

A professor of Forest Resources Management, Department of Forestry and Wildlife Management, Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta, Samuel Oluwalana has come out to lament about Nigeria’s untapped forest resources, including the cure for various ailments.

He recently had his say while speaking to the press, and Nigerians have been reacting.

According to him, since Chief Obafemi Awolowo was president, no other government has paid attention to forestry in the country, and they have only bothered to plunder everything.

Samuel added that estates are coming up everywhere, but the nation will not feed on them.

His words, “Virtually everything has been destroyed. After the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, no government has paid attention to forestry. Rather, our governments and institutions succeeded in plundering everything. Talking about maximising our forest resources is taking things too far, we have not learnt anything. When you listen to government officials, they talk about the economy, but not much about nature. Life is beyond naira and dollar, look at the way we, especially the large industries, are devastating our landscape. Estates are coming up everywhere, are we going to eat the estates? They are destroying the land and the future. We import foods, we import everything and we don’t seem to have a plan. Look at our cities. We have to look at indigenous knowledge, which we have not documented. Countries like Israel, the United States, Russia and Iran are tapping their indigenous knowledge, but we have destroyed our plants, insects, scorpions and other things that should have been useful to us.”