How much of ignorance is acceptable if it leads to a greater good?
Before the coming of the colonists and the rapid adoption of what we now call civilisation, Nigerian indigenous cultures were, without necessarily knowing it in the language of modern environmentalism, playing a crucial role in protecting our natural environment. The unique thing about this role was that the premise of many of the cultural activities used to guard our habitats was spiritual. Nature was just a well to be endlessly drawn from. It was connected to gods, ancestors, spirits and a moral order that determined how people interacted with the land. This meant that as African Traditional Religion gradually lost its strong grip on people, some of the moral and divine incentives to abide by preset rules also dwindled.
Although many of these practices have been eroded, traces of them remain. They include sacred groves, totem animals, communal and clan ownership of land, the fallowing of rivers and farmlands, and systems of accountability to gods for the prosperity received from nature, amongst others.
A sacred grove is a patch of forest reserved by communities, especially for spiritual reasons. Communities hold the belief that their ancestors, deities and gods reside within the trees. These places were therefore protected from hunting, indiscriminate tree cutting and deforestation. As with other religions of the world, spiritual authority could be a powerful way of enforcing communal obedience and compliance. “In many indigenous societies, nature is perceived as sacred, and environmental protection is achieved through spiritual reverence rather than coercive enforcement” (UNEP, 2021; Verschuuren et al., 2021, as cited in Amon, 2026).
According to Amon (2026), sacred groves are found among numerous ethnic groups in Nigeria, including Yoruba, Igbo and Edo communities, communities in the Niger Delta Region, where sacred groves are mostly regarded as protected areas and reserved for elders and traditional priests who enter them to harvest herbs, roots and other forms of traditional medicine, as well as communities in the Middle Belt. Sacred groves represent socio-spiritual landscapes where cultural identity, moral order and ecological integrity converge.
The perception of nature as sacred explains, in part, why members of a community could contribute to its protection without the need for formal campaigns or government enforcement. The reverence for nature in indigenous Nigerian cultures is also evident in the existence of gods associated with different elements of nature. For example, “Among the Igbo people of Nigeria, ‘ala’ is the mother goddess, the spirit of fertility and custodian of public morality in association with the ancestors…” (Gbenda, 2006, as cited in Chinyere, 2022). Ala is also referred to as the goddess of the earth, and traditionally, people would avoid doing things to the earth that might upset her.
In certain parts of Nigeria, such as Erin Ayonigba in Ekiti State, there are dedicated waterbodies that are not open to fishing or swimming. Again, while the restriction is rooted in sacredness, such practices allow fish to thrive and certain species to remain unharmed. Today, in the absence of some of these traditional forms of enforcement, individuals and organisations have to organise campaigns to return people’s consciousness to the revered essence of the environment.
Indigenous Nigerian cultures have also contributed to the protection of nature through the designation of totem animals. Totem animals are animals regarded as sacred and, in some cases, worshipped. An interview with a local chief by Chinyere (2022) revealed that the sacred forest, “agbondiekweli,” in Ozubulu, Ekwusigo L.G.A., houses monkeys that are not to be killed within the forest area. He adds that it is also a taboo to kill a monkey in Awka because it is their totemic animal. “At the moment, situated at ‘Eke Awka’ market is a shrine with a giant tree housing monkeys in their number, and these animals remain unharmed to date,” Chinyere writes. Other totem animals protected in Eastern Nigeria include the “ewi” (wild rabbit) of Nnewi and the “eke” (python) of Idemili.
The ecological significance of these practices is easy to see. A rule that says do not kill this animal is, at the same time, a conservation rule when it protects a species from hunting. These practices have helped to keep certain species of animals from disappearing from particular environments because of overhunting. What may appear to be mythology from one perspective can therefore function as environmental regulation from another.
Another aspect of Nigerian cultural practices that supported the conservation of nature is the communal ownership of land. This model of land ownership helped to prevent the over-commercialisation of land, whereby small pieces could be sold by different individuals. It also ensured that land remained a shared inheritance, connecting members of the community to the land, its culture and its traditions. This does not mean that communal ownership was always equitable or that individual ownership is inherently destructive. Rather, the communal model demonstrates that there were systems in which land was understood as something held and protected across generations and not simply as a commodity for cash exchange.
The practice of fallowing lands and rivers also ensured that nature had periods of rest. In some parts of Nigeria, this practice was held together by spiritual meanings and communal restrictions. For example, in some places in Sokoto and Kebbi States, fishing is banned during the rainy and early dry seasons to allow fish time to grow and breed. The Argungu Fishing Festival is then organised between February and March to signal the resumption of fishing activities. In Isoko, the Urie Fishing Festival is used to mark the official opening of the Urie Lake after months of being closed off.
The principle behind such practices is simple: nature needs time to replenish itself. Indigenous knowledge in Nigeria has also been shown to support soil conservation, forest regeneration and biodiversity preservation, particularly in rural communities. Sometimes what appears to be a restriction on human activity is actually a way of protecting the conditions that make continued human activity possible.
Without knowing it, our traditional ways were preserving our environment. Perhaps this is the cost of ignorance: it blinds us to the benefits and consequences of our actions. If we had understood the role that some of our original spiritual and cultural demands were playing in environmental protection, perhaps we would have held on to certain parts of them, or at best adapted them to suit our new ways of life.
Research indicates that sacred groves often contain higher species diversity than surrounding landscapes subjected to intensive land use (Berkes et al., 2021). Ecologically, sacred groves serve as biodiversity reservoirs and providers of ecosystem services such as microclimate regulation and watershed protection. In Nigeria, sacred groves have been documented across ecological zones, serving as refuges for endemic plant species, medicinal herbs and wildlife.
The decline of these practices alongside the adoption of new religions and modern systems of life suggests the potential value of culturally embedded conservation systems for sustainability. The issue is not that indigenous practices should replace modern environmental science. Rather, it is that we may have abandoned some systems of restraint without replacing the cultural and moral structures that once sustained them.
In Nigeria, there are eco-activism groups such as Friends of the Earth International’s Nigeria group, Green Habitat Initiative and Environmental Rights Action. While they are making progress, particularly in the big cities, a larger part of the country remains unmoved. There may therefore be a need to explore cultural enforcement mechanisms as another way of reviving environmental consciousness.
These eco-activism institutions can also implore the support of age grades and other communal avenues such as school reunions. Age grades support their communities in so many areas, including security, economic, political, religious, cultural and educational concerns. They sometimes build schools, markets, health-care centres and bridges, and even lobby in corridors of power for issues of community interest. In most Igbo communities, they are often looked upon for solutions to sensitive issues.
With the right outreach, age grades can extend their action into eco-activism and environmental advocacy through interventions such as mass tree planting and afforestation, environmental education, community clean-ups, or by channelling conversations directly to policymakers. Their strength lies in their familiarity with the communities they serve. Environmental protection can therefore become not only the work of governments and environmental organisations, but a communal responsibility once again.
Indigenous knowledge in Nigeria has been shown to support soil conservation, forest regeneration and biodiversity preservation, particularly in rural communities. As part of efforts to protect and rebuild our natural environment, the adoption and implementation of sacred ecology may therefore be a good place to start, considering the effectiveness of cultural practices in upholding nature.
Sacred ecology studies how indigenous and rural communities understand, live in and respect the natural world through spiritual, cultural and religious beliefs. Our ancestors may not have spoken about biodiversity, carbon sequestration, ecosystem services or climate adaptation, but they had their own language for understanding the relationship between human prosperity and the health of the natural world. Integrating environmental education into today’s belief systems could, therefore, attach moral significance to environmental protection and increase people’s commitment to it.
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