Administrative Measures to Sustainable Forestry Development in South-West Nigeria

Abstract

Forest administration is on ways of achieving effectiveness and efficiency in forestry development. The objective of this paper is to examine the administrative measures and their impacts on forestry development in the South-West Nigeria. Primary data needed for this study were collected from all the forest officers in charge of the 31 forestry administrative zones in the six states namely: Ekiti (four); Lagos (five); Ogun (four); Ondo (eight); Osun (six) and Oyo (four) and one forest officer from each of the six state’s headquarters. They were interviewed using structured questionnaires to obtain data on forest administration. Thirty-seven forest officers were interviewed in all. Descriptive statistics and Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (D) were used to analyze the data obtained. Result revealed that these administrative measures investigated in the South-West Nigeria are low: provision of up-to-date map of the study areas (48.6%), provision of equipment to run the forest affairs (40.5%), while the following are high: supervision of forest programmes (94.6%) and regular annual report (86.5%). Administrative measures investigated have significant relationship (P<0.01) with forestry development. A newly reconstructed and restructured forest sector, built on the pillars of adequate provision of equipment and effective supervision, would play a major role in sustainable forestry development.