Heritage in Nigeria is both tangible and intangible, shaped by landscapes that sustain society through vital ecosystem services. This creates responsibility for those who inhabit the land, yet breakdowns lead to deforestation, polluted rivers, and threatened livelihoods. Such degradation exposes how ecological integrity and community well‑being are inseparable. International frameworks like UNESCO’s affirm sacred landscapes as cultural heritage, where nature and identity are jointly protected.

This understanding inspired my poem “Forest of the Gods,” published in this issue—a meditation on ecological loss, ancestral memory, and resistance. The poem reflects on how sacred forests, once protected by collective belief and communal care, are now under siege. Trees fall where taboos once stood—where Indigenous laws and sacred prohibitions once governed land use, protecting forests through collective accountability.

Rivers once revered are now dredged, polluted, or fished without restraint. The spiritual covenants that bound people to land are dismissed as superstition, inconvenient to profit and development. Environmental degradation, in this context, is not accidental; it is ideological, shaped by systems that prioritize extraction and growth over continuity and care. “Forest of the Gods” was written from this place of mourning and defiance. It asks what happens when sacred spaces are stripped of meaning and sold. It asks who benefits and who pays the price. And it insists that resistance, however fragile, still exists. The poem is not nostalgic; it is confrontational. It refuses to accept destruction as inevitable.

Yet the destruction is not coming only from some distant enemy. Often, it is driven from within. Developers, miners, politicians, and intermediaries—armed with documents, bulldozers, and state backing—flatten groves and rename them “estates.” Ancestral land becomes “prime property.” And what was once sacred becomes “vacant.” This pattern reflects a broader crisis of land governance in Nigeria, where communal tenure and spiritual claims are routinely overridden by formal titles and state approvals, leaving sacred spaces particularly vulnerable to seizure and erasure.

It was against this backdrop that I spoke to a youth leader from Poka, an Indigenous community in Lagos State, south-west Nigeria, who asked to remain anonymous. Poka’s residents have traditionally relied on a local grove for ecological services, including clean air, water filtration, and pollinator habitats, as well as for ritual and cultural practices. I asked him about this sacred grove, known as Igbo Oro, a protected forest space of cultural and spiritual significance, with giant trees overlooking the Pobo primary school.

“That one is gone,” he said. 

“Gone to where?” 

“Real estate capitalists,” he replied. “And we are helpless. Our home is gone.” 

The grove he referred to was once a living archive—trees that filtered air and water, habitats for birds and insects, and sites for rituals connecting the community to ancestors—now cleared for development. His words echo documented patterns across Lagos and Ogun States, where Oro groves and other ritual forests have been cleared for housing and infrastructure, often without environmental impact assessments or community consent, reflecting the rapid pace of urbanization and forest conversion in south-western Nigeria.

Across Yorubaland, Indigenous communities are resisting dispossession and protecting what remains of their heritage. Sites like the Igbo Oro grove in Poka—once vital for biodiversity, microclimate regulation, and spiritual life—show how remaining forests serve as ecological and cultural keystone habitats. The Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove, a UNESCO World Heritage Site along the Osun River, stands as the most prominent symbol of this resistance: a living spiritual landscape of shrines, sculptures, and pathways shaped by centuries of Yoruba cosmology. Dedicated to Osun, the òrìṣà of fertility, water, and creativity, the grove has endured because ritual practice and communal enforcement safeguarded it long before formal conservation language existed.

The difference between narratives that highlight external “saviors” and the real, ongoing work of local communities defending their land matters is that it shows that sacred spaces in Nigeria are protected not by outsiders but by the persistent labor of those who live with and care for them. Across Yorubaland, it is community members—guardians of groves, ritual practices, and ancestral memory—who resist erasure, maintain ecological balance, and assert spiritual and cultural continuity, even when their efforts go unrecognized.

Beyond Osogbo, similar struggles are unfolding across Yorubaland. In parts of Ogun State and Ekiti State, sacred groves tied to ancestral cults and masquerade traditions have been defended through ritual occupation, community protests, and appeals to customary authority. It is estimated that more than 50 % of the sacred groves in southwestern Nigeria have been destroyed, while another 40 % remain under threat from development pressures, urban expansion, and cultural change. 

At Osun‑Osogbo, the environmental stakes are real, immediate, and scientifically quantifiable. This 75‑hectare grove—one of the last remnants of primary high forest in southern Nigeria—harbors over 400 species of plants and at least seven primate species, including the endangered white‑throated guenon, the vulnerable putty‑nosed monkey, and the threatened red‑capped mangabey. The grove functions as a critical reservoir of biodiversity and ecosystem complexity.

Taboos on hunting, fishing, tree-felling, farming, and removing natural materials, reinforced through community custodianship and rituals, have enabled in-situ conservation. Thereby helping stabilize microhabitats, maintain soil structure and nutrient cycles, support water quality, and preserve medicinal and ecological diversity. However, like other groves in Yorubaland, the Osun-Osogbo Grove’s ecological integrity is under cumulative pressure. These include urban encroachment on its buffer zone, pollution of the Osun River, visitor-related impacts during annual festivals, and habitat fragmentation. Reflecting on these challenges, Doyin Olosun, one of the grove’s custodians and adopted daughter of the late priestess Adunni Olorisa, said: “That’s our biggest concern at the moment, the water isn’t the same as it was then . . . the mining waste has contaminated all of Osun River’s tributaries.”

Along the Ogun River and around sites such as Asejire, communities have mobilized against industrial pollution and water extraction projects that threaten ritual waters central to Yoruba cosmology. 

Recent water tests from tributaries feeding the Asejire Reservoir—Ibadan’s main water source—show dangerously high levels of lead, aluminium, and arsenic. These toxins pose an immediate threat to public health and the environment. They result from unchecked upstream artisanal mining and unregulated industrial discharge. This trend mirrors the wider mining‑driven ecological damage in the region, recently reported by The Cable. In Oyo, communities have also issued urgent warnings about illegal mining. They cite irreversible ecological collapse, destabilised watersheds, habitat loss, and increased turbidity from rising sedimentation. In response, traditionalists and community leaders urge authorities to enforce stricter mining regulations, monitor water quality, and support community-driven initiatives to prevent further disasters.

Ayinke Ifatoromade‑Otaoti Adefemi of the Isese Renaissance Society(an organized groups within the Yoruba Indigenous religion) explained, “As practitioners of Isese, we hold a deep respect for nature. Our commitment to preserving the environment is integral to our faith, and we are eager to collaborate with others to promote grassroots initiatives that enhance our ecosystem”. Here, spiritual claims to land and water increasingly intersect with environmental justice and public health concerns, particularly where sacred rivers also serve as sources of drinking water. Crucially, residents have not waited for state intervention. Community associations, traditional custodians, and youth groups have organised river patrols. They have also documented pollution exposed by journalists and environmental NGOs. Residents have resisted illegal mining and pressed regulators for accountability and long-term watershed protection. Their actions have strengthened adaptive governance, riparian buffer management, and community-led hydrological monitoring. 

These threats—now undermining sacred groves and other culturally protected landscapes that once helped filter water, stabilise soils, and shield nearby communities from contamination—are compounded by reduced environmental flows caused by upstream industrial water abstraction and increased sedimentation from land‑use change. This weakens natural dilution capacity and heightens toxic‑exposure risks for downstream populations, underscoring the urgency of ecosystem‑based watershed management, strict enforcement of environmental standards, and protection of both ecosystem function and human health.

In Lagos State, where urban expansion is most aggressive and threatens sacred forests and waterways, resistance has taken quieter but no less significant forms. In Isheri, an Awori community; in Ikorodu, home to Indigenous Ìjèbú-speaking people; and in Badagry, traditionally settled by the Ẹ̀gún, youth groups and traditional leaders have turned to documentation, oral history, and media exposure to delay or contest the conversion of sacred forests and riverbanks into housing estates. Environmental advocates in Lagos have also sounded the alarm on ecological loss tied to urbanization. Desmond Majekodunmi, Chairman of the Lekki Urban Forest and Animal Shelter Initiative, warned that removing mangrove forests worsens water pollution and destroys aquatic habitats for countless species, undermining coastal resilience, according to an EnviroNews report. 

Fishermen in nearby Makoko have equally voiced the human consequences of these changes: “Dredgers have spoiled the entire waters,” says community leader Baale Semede Emmanuel, describing how sand extraction and lagoon alteration have disrupted fish breeding areas and driven many fish away, undermining traditional livelihoods and food security. In response, the community has organized patrols to monitor illegal dredging, reported violations to local authorities, and collaborated with youth groups to plant mangrove saplings to restore critical breeding grounds. These local strategies echo wider patterns: investigative reporting on the disappearance of Lagos’s sacred forests shows how such initiatives struggle against overwhelming economic pressure and how the loss of groves—like the degradation of waterways—erodes both ecological stability and cultural memory. Yet they continue to slow the erasure and preserve collective memory.

These movements come at a cost. Community members challenging developers or state-backed projects often face intimidation, arrest, or economic marginalisation—risks that are part of the broader threats faced by land and environmental defenders in Nigeria. At the same time, struggles over water pollution reveal important insights into how resistance to the degradation of sacred groves is both organised and sustained. Specifically, where river contamination has caused visible ecological damage and public health concerns, community actors have responded by moving beyond ritual authority. Instead, they leverage media exposure, environmental advocacy, and scientific evidence to reframe degradation as a shared societal problem. This approach has broadened support and strengthened claims to legitimacy. Similarly, the defence of sacred groves is increasingly adopting this strategy, linking spiritual stewardship with ecological protection and demonstrating how lessons from watershed activism inform contemporary change efforts.

According to the 2025 Global Witness report Roots of Resistance, at least 146 land and environmental defenders were killed or disappeared worldwide in 2024—on average, about three every week—underscoring how perilous this work has become. In Nigeria, defenders such as Odey Oyama of the Rainforest Resource Development Centre were arrested by more than 40 masked officers and charged with promoting inter‑communal war in what he described as an attempt to “silence me for opposing corporate logging and corruption. Defending our environment is a perilous job. You can easily be killed.” 

Still, the fight continues because the stakes are existential. Forests regulate climate, protect water sources, and sustain biodiversity. Beyond that, they hold memory. They teach relationships. They remind people of who they are and where they come from. Nigeria has already lost an alarming proportion of its forests—an estimated 90–95% of its original forest cover—thereby intensifying pressure on communities defending what remains. To lose these groves is to lose more than trees; it is to lose orientation.

Reclaiming the grove here means sustaining responsibility, memory, and obligation against erasure—not merely recovering lost land. This commitment appears through ongoing stewardship, ritual, documentation, protest, and the refusal to reduce sacred ground to vacant property. Sometimes, reclamation becomes narrative: telling what was lost, identifying ongoing threats, and forging solidarity among pressured communities. These struggles confront colonial systems that commodify land rather than recognize it as a relation. Indigenous environmentalism in Nigeria remains not a relic but a vital, adaptive practice. Across sacred spaces—Osun-Osogbo, Poka, riverbanks, besieged forests—communities assert their present bonds to place, reclaiming the grove as both heritage and ethical imperative: land, water, and memory, inseparably joined.