The Nigerian Parliment recently passed sweeping legislation to protect endangered wildlife from illegal trafficking. Once the president assents and the bill becomes law, offenders could face fines of up to 12 million naira ($8,300) and 10 years in prison for trafficking elephant ivory, pangolin scales and other products from threatened species. The bill, hailed as one of the toughest legal deterrents to wildlife crime in West Africa, is a big step forward in conservation policies, but experts warn that without strong enforcement capacity, it risks becoming little more than a paper victory. Recently passed by the Nigerian Senate on Oct. 28, the Endangered Species Conservation and Protection Bill 2024 aligns Nigeria more closely with international conservation agreements, including CITES. “This new bill addresses long-existing gaps in our legal framework,” Terseer Ugbor, the bill’s sponsor and deputy chairman of the House Committee on Environment, said in a call with Mongabay. “The old law was riddled with ambiguities. It failed to specify whether its provisions applied only to international wildlife trade or also to domestic transactions.” The new legislation expands the list of species protected, toughens deterrent penalties and empowers the courts to freeze assets tied to wildlife crimes. It also grants government agencies the power to close interagency enforcement and prosecution gaps that traffickers have abused for decades. Nigeria is an established global hub for wildlife trafficking; in April 2025, more than 3.7 metric tons of pangolin scales, representing more than 1,900 animals, were seized in Lagos. Estimates suggest that between 2010 and…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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