The Last Vegetation Tunnel

Tunnels are supposed to be of hard sunstances: rock, concrete or earth. When one is made of vegetation, we must behold its beauty.

My first taste of that beauty was on my first trip to Kano in 1976. Then, at 20 or so kilometers to the city, you would be encapsulated by a canopy of large Khaya senegalensis (Madaci, Mahogany) trees. Their micro-atmosphere of such canopies was cool and soft in contrast to the heat of bare surfaces that you left behind. It was an amazing sight for the little teen I was then.

Later, as I drove around the country and also live in the city for some time, I would come across those vegetation tunnels on many roads and in many northern cities, especially in the GRAs.

The most spectacular was the one that once stood on the mountainous link between Kagoro and Gidan Waya in Southern Kaduna. Wao! Wao!! Wao!!! That was my exclamation when I drove through it in 1996.

But it was predated my experience of the Tureta one in 1983 when I travelled to Sokoto for the first time to attend an interview as a graduate assistant at University of Sokoto. It appeared from afar like a green tunnel with a small hole in the middle. We approached it and, behold, it was a chain of canopies of Azaridacta indica (Neem) trees. I would enjoy them for the next ten years of my stay there.

Two days ago, I noticed that the Tureta vegetation tunnel was gone. The trees have been pruned heavily. The one at Kagoro-Gidan Waya link was also swept away when the trees were felled four years or so back. Also, only a sparsely populated row shelters vehicles on their left wing as they approach Kano now innsfew spots. Likewise the GRA canopies have become thinner, though they still exist in many towns.

The trees have been thinned pursuant to the new FERMA concept of "vegetation control" that hopes to offer motorists better visibility, avoid hindrance to vehicle tops and improve security. In the GRAs and most township roads, dualisation of roads necessistated to felling of the buffer trees.

I was the criminal who felled all the front raw trees along Independence Way and Mando Road, Kaduna, in 1997 when Straburg was contracted their dualization by PTF. Fortunately, the second row served as a backup, thanks to the good planning by the Public Works (PWD, or "Birabiddi" as our parents usrd to call it) and Forestry Departments of the then Northern Nigeria, which were doing their work professionally.

Buffer plantings, as we call them, were essential parts of town planning throughout Northern Nigeria then. From Otukpo to Sokoto, from Ilorin to Maiduguri, every government estate, house, school, hospital or township road was adequately sheltered by trees. The Sardauna and his foresters, from the pictures of that era, did not enjoy the canopies before the trees could fully form. But through their vision, we came to enjoy the cool weather of the schools, hospitals and urban roads. Remember them in your prayers whenever you drive through such canopies wherever you find them.

It is unfortunate that the culture of buffer planting was abandoned from 1976 after the Gowon era. Successive governments, with the exception of few establsihments, built roads and estates without planting a single tree. Compare, for example, the State and Federal lowcosts housing estates with the Old GRA in Bauchi. Even the new "Gida Dubu" (Gubi Estate) and Tambari Housing Estate were completed and inhabited without planting a single tree.

Billions could be spent on buildings, but not a dime could be spared to shelter it with overhead vegetation. Sometimes the cost is initially included in the bill of quantities but it is often abandoned at completion when the project struggles to finish due to underfunding. If ever awarded, the contract of planting is often awarded to girl friends and other non-professionals who know little about trees. Sometimes too much emphasis is paid to flowers and lawns that are temporary, very expensive and very difficult to maintain at the detriment of trees that are everlasting.

Thanks to the efforts of the FCDA, central Abuja is rescued from the environmental insensitivity of our planners and officials. But still, I wonder why the same authority leaves private estate developers in the city to go free after felling thousands of trees and failing to plant a single one. Gwarimpa Estate, arguably, the largest housing estate in West Africa, was, like the Bauchi estates I mentioned earlier, completed and inhabited without planting a single tree. I hope the FCDA will wake up to its respinsibility here.

We also applaud here the efforts of state governments that are making efforts in this regard. Jigawa is a good example. It has been planting millions of trees int the last seven years on road sides and establishments through its Ministry of Environment.

The picture in this post is that of the last vegetation tunnel I saw in a village before Tureta. As I drove my truck past it, I managed to capture it because it may not be there when next I return. It would have then fallen victim to the ravage of FERMA.

Let us revive the culture of tree planting and greening our environment. If people in the 1930s up to 1970s who did not have our level of exposure could do it, I can find no reason for our collective failure here. This is the greatest shortcoming of man according to Al-Mutanabi:

"Wa lam ara fi 'uyubin naasi 'aiban
Ka naqsil qaadiriina alat tamaami."

Meaning

"I have not found a worse shortcoming in men like the failure of the able to accomplish."

Aliyu