An alleged illicit deal scandal is swirling around President Muhammadu Buhari’s former Environment Minister, and now Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), Amina Mohammed.
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A report by Global Media Max, a strategic communications services agent to Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), released during this week revealed how over 1.4 million illegal rosewood logs from Nigeria, worth $300 million, were laundered into China, allegedly by Mohammed and some government officials.
China has a voracious demand for rosewood used for furniture. The Chinese demand has turned Thailand’s Forests into virtual war zones.
The report by Global Media Max claimed that over $1 million was paid to top Nigerian officials while Mohammed was the Environment Minister to release the woods stopped by Chinese authorities
According to The Guardian, Senior Policy Advisor and Director of Forest Campaigns at the EIA, Lisa Handy, said the report indicted the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations regarding her role in the entire process.
“Thousands of permits,” she said, “were ultimately signed by the then Minister of Environment, Mrs. Amina J. Mohammed, who currently serves as Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN)”, according to the report emanating from a two-year investigation by EIA on the “Rosewood Racket” detailing the journey of illegal African rosewood, also known as “kosso,” from the remote forests of Nigeria.
The paper reported that EIA investigators said they found that she signed thousands of retroactive CITES permits in January 2017 as one of her last acts as Minister of Environment, and just before she was sworn in as the Deputy Secretary-General to the UN.
The permits were reportedly used by Chinese importers to release over 1.4 million illegal logs that had been detained at the Chinese border for months, after having left Nigeria in violation of both Nigerian law and international CITES obligations.
EIA says the products of the illegal logging found their way to luxury furniture boutiques in China, “despite protections placed on this threatened tree species by the CITES.
”It further stated that the exploding Chinese demand for kosso over the past five years had triggered a series of “boom-and-bust” cycles that led to the depletion of forests across West African nations.
“In most of the countries, kosso has been illegally logged in violation of harvest and log export bans, including in protected areas. Precious trees have been laundered into the international market through regional smuggling routes, using mis-declaration and falsification of official documents.
“The boom, according to the EIA, began in Gambia and Benin, but Chinese traders had to rapidly move on through other countries in the region — before settling on the largest untapped forest resources of Nigeria — as supply was exhausted in just a few short years.
According to the publication, since 2013, Nigeria has been transformed from a net importer into the world’s largest exporter of rosewood logs, and is to date one of the top wood exporters on the continent.
The unprecedented and uncontrolled level of logging across the country is causing desertification, imperiling the livelihoods of millions of people, and threatening national parks and endangered emblematic species such as the most vulnerable chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes ellioti) in the world.
Kosso was added to Appendix II of CITES in 2016, meaning that logging and trade must be strictly controlled and kept at sustainable levels.
