President Bola Tinubu has signed an executive order prohibiting the export of wood and allied products from Nigeria.
This was announced by the Minister of Environment, Balarabe Lawal, at the 18th meeting of the National Council on Environment held in Katsina State on Wednesday.
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Mr Lawal said the directive, titled “Presidential Executive Order on the Prohibition of Exportation of Wood and Allied Products, 2025,” was necessitated by the need to strengthen Nigeria’s response to climate change and halt the rapid depletion of the country’s forest resources.
According to the minister, Nigeria’s forests are critical to environmental sustainability, providing clean air and water, supporting livelihoods, conserving biodiversity and playing a key role in mitigating climate change.
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“The continued export of wood and allied products undermines these benefits and threatens the long-term health of the environment,” Mr Lawal said.
He added that Nigeria’s ecosystem is under severe pressure due to illegal logging and unregulated wood exports, which have significantly weakened the country’s forest cover.
He said all licences and permits previously issued by any ministry, department, or agency for the extraction and export of wood have been suspended and declared invalid.
The ban represents the latest major policy intervention by the federal government aimed at curbing widespread illegal logging and strengthening Nigeria’s climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies.
Not the first time
PREMIUM TIMES reports that in 2018, the Standing Committee of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) recommended the suspension of commercial trade in African rosewood (Pterocarpus erinaceus, also known as Kosso) from Nigeria.
The recommendation followed Nigeria’s authorisation of massive exports—estimated at over 180,000 cubic metres—to China and Vietnam without evidence that the trade was sustainable.
The move raised concerns about the survival of the species. It prompted Nigerian authorities to impose bans and levies, while also drawing attention to the scale of illegal logging in West Africa.
In 2023, the federal government announced a review of its ban on charcoal export and placed a suspension on the exportation of processed wood and other allied products.
Despite these measures, enforcement has remained weak. Illegal logging has continued across major biodiversity hotspots, particularly in Cross River State, which is home to the country’s largest remaining rainforest.
In Nigeria’s north-east, failed harvests and widespread poverty have pushed many farmers into illegal logging, fuelling a cross-border trade dominated by middlemen.
Between 2001 and 2022, Nigeria’s most forested areas lost an estimated 11 per cent of their tree cover, a trend that has persisted as large-scale commercial interests continue to encroach on protected zones.
Amidst the lingering scourge of climate change across the African continent and globally, experts have encouraged the massive planting of trees as part of measures to boost climate resilience and adaptation due to the inherent ability of most tree species to sequester atmospheric carbon.
However, PREMIUM TIMES investigations have repeatedly shown that the federal government’s afforestation programmes aimed at restoring degraded forests are largely unsuccessful and poorly implemented.
Similarly, weak border controls and lax policy enforcement have also allowed perpetrators of illegal logging to evade prosecution and sanctions.
Suspended licences
Speaking on the operationalisation of the executive order, Mr Lawal said all licences and permits previously issued by any ministry, department or agency for the extraction and export of wood have been suspended and declared invalid.
He said the ban is “immediate” and that the government had preemptively halted export processing before the executive order was signed.
“There is no wood in the ports; it is not there. We stopped processing wood (exports) since last year,” the minister told PREMIUM TIMES at the event.
Mr Lawal explained that any wood products currently sitting at the nation’s ports are not legal exports caught in transit, but rather illicit items that have been intercepted by security operatives.
“The only wood we have in the ports are the ones from attempted smuggling, which we apprehended,” he stated, adding that the government is also dealing with international cases where “some of them were smuggled out, and they are being brought back.”
With the new directive, illegal logging and deforestation are prohibited nationwide, marking a significant shift in Nigeria’s environmental policy framework.
The federal government said the prohibition is anchored on Sections 17(2) and 20 of the Nigerian Constitution. These provisions mandate the state to ensure that the nation’s material resources are harnessed for the common good and to protect Nigeria’s water, air, land, forests and wildlife.
The executive order states that unchecked logging and the commercial exportation of wood products are inconsistent with these constitutional obligations.
Under the policy, security agencies and relevant ministries are expected to enforce a nationwide clampdown on illegal logging and related activities.
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