Nigeria’s National Tree Planting Day: A disjointed ritual in urgent times

Across parts of Nigeria, some government agencies and communities are holding events to mark the National Tree Planting campaign. But a closer look reveals a fragmented, inconsistent, and largely ceremonial approach. While August 3rd, was once declared as the official day for nationwide tree planting, many states now observe the event on different dates, and […]

Across parts of Nigeria, some government agencies and communities are holding events to mark the National Tree Planting campaign. But a closer look reveals a fragmented, inconsistent, and largely ceremonial approach. While August 3rd, was once declared as the official day for nationwide tree planting, many states now observe the event on different dates, and the federal government itself is not consistently marking the occasion. Lagos, for instance, held its 2025 tree planting celebration nearly a month early—on July 4. Some states have not and are not observing it at all. What should be a unifying national ecological action is fast becoming a disjointed ritual, lacking coherence, seriousness, and results.

The idea of dedicating a specific day to nationwide tree planting is not new and remains fundamentally sound. In an era of escalating climate change, desertification, and loss of biodiversity, Nigeria has every reason to plant and protect trees. But what’s happening today — or on different days across the country, is failing to reflect that urgency. Instead of being a strategic response to environmental degradation, the annual tree planting campaign is continuing to look more like a box-ticking event, disconnected from long-term environmental planning.

Even where the event is being marked, as in some states and institutions, it is following the same pattern of previous years—speeches, banners, photo opportunities, and ceremonial planting. Substantial funds are going into organising these events, with far less being spent on post-planting care, community education, nursery development, or climate-adaptive land restoration. In several instances, the cost of media showcasing and hospitality outweighs the budget for seedlings and tree maintenance.

What’s also continuing is the planting of trees without ownership. Seedlings are being put in the ground in fields, road medians, or public parks, with no clear plan on who will water or protect them. In many cases, communities are not involved, and schools are not prepared to integrate the effort into their environmental education. Farmers are rarely consulted, even though they are key players in managing land use. A few weeks from now, many of today’s trees will wither away unnoticed. In some places, the same ground has been used over and over each year, because the trees from past years did not survive.

Compounding the problem is the absence of coordination from the federal level. Even though August 3 was nationally adopted, there is no clear policy mandate requiring all states and agencies to align with that date, nor is there any central monitoring and evaluation structure. The result is a scattershot implementation. One state plants on July 4, another on August 10, and others not at all. With no national reporting, there’s no way to know how many trees are planted, where they are located, or how many survive. This fragmentation undermines the credibility and effectiveness of the entire initiative.

And in the middle of this domestic inconsistency, Nigeria is still making symbolic gestures abroad. Only recently, Vice President Kashim Shettima visited Ethiopia’s acclaimed Green Legacy Initiative and donated 6,000 cashew nut seedlings to support their afforestation drive. It was a commendable gesture of Pan-African climate diplomacy, but also an ironic one. Nigeria has the capacity to support reforestation elsewhere, but not the political will to coordinate and sustain its own national tree planting effort. The contrast is painful—and telling.

To redeem this campaign, Nigeria needs to do more than just plant trees—we need to rethink how we plant, why we plant, and who is involved. There must be a return to national coherence. If August 3 is to remain the official date, then the Federal Ministry of Environment must lead from the front. This means issuing annual guidelines, enforcing a unified date, and building a national database to track planted trees and survival rates.

States must move beyond celebration to cultivation. Rather than spending large sums on canopies, live bands, and refreshments, those resources should be redirected toward nursery development, training of school green clubs, hiring community forest monitors, and acquiring water tanks and fencing. The success of the campaign should be judged not by how many events are held, but by how many trees survive after 12 months.

Ownership is everything. Every tree planted must have a steward—whether it’s a school, farmer, youth group, mosque, church, or market association. Without clear custodianship, trees become orphaned, neglected, and forgotten. Community involvement is the missing link in most planting drives, and until that is addressed, the outcomes will remain the same.

We must embrace local ecology and agro-economics. The species being planted should not be randomly selected, but matched to the soil, rainfall, and livelihoods of each location. In dry zones, drought-resistant and multipurpose species like neem, acacia, moringa and browse trees that livestock can feed on are better suited. In forest zones, fruit trees or timber-yielding varieties may offer both ecological and economic benefits. Nigeria must plant trees that people want to protect.

The media and civil society should shift their focus. Instead of covering ceremonial events only, journalists should return to sites after six months or a year and investigate the survival of trees. This kind of follow-up journalism can hold officials accountable and push for better performance. Civil society groups, particularly environmental NGOs, must also track tree planting programs and publish independent impact reports.

As this year’s loosely coordinated National Tree Planting campaign is being observed, Nigeria must decide whether we are truly committed to reversing deforestation and environmental degradation or merely interested in symbolic acts. We are in a climate crisis. Rainfall patterns are changing. Soils are eroding. Rural livelihoods are collapsing. Tree planting, when done right, is one of the most cost-effective solutions available. But it must be a serious, sustained, and scientific effort—not an annual festival of greenwashing.

Until Nigeria treats tree planting as a national survival strategy rather than a state-by-state public relations exercise, tree planting campaign will continue to fall short. Our forests will keep vanishing. Our deserts will keep advancing. And our climate promises will ring hollow.

Ahmad resides at FMA 2, off Yaya Abubbakar Road, Fadamar Mada, Bauchi. Can be reached  at  [email protected]