OGBA ZOO OPERATOR CRIES OUT TO OBASEKI

Ogba Zoo and Nature Park is Edo State’s foremost conservation and tourism enclave, which for years was neglected and abandoned until 2000 when the administration of former Gov. Lucky Igbinedion under Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement ceded the management of the park to a private firm headed by one of Edo State’s renowned tourism practitioner, Andy Osa Ehanire, with a promise to fund the rejuvenation of the park among others.
Ehanire and his management team have largely succeeded in bringing back from the brink the death the zoo, breathed life into it and make a growing concern and a tourist attraction attracting the interest
of nature lovers, conservationists, fun and leisure seekers who daily, especially during festive periods, throng the nature and leisure enclave for entertainment.

While the management is still battling the Edo State government to keep it own end of the bargain in respect of funding the zoo, however, investigation revealed that Ehanire is fighting perhaps the greatest battle of his life, as he is engaged with both poachers of the zoo’ natural resources and land grabbers, who have in the last couple of years decimated the zoo.

Historically, Ehanire disclosed the wide reach of the zoo: ‘‘The Ogba Zoo, which we manage, was designed and developed in the early seventies by then military administrator of former Bendel State, the late Brig. General Samuel O. Ogbemudia. Its concept was an extensive biological garden, with potential for resort development.

‘‘Soon after Ogbemudia’s regime, the zoo suffered a long era of decline and eventual collapse, spanning the late eighties and nineties. By the time of our private sector – led intervention in the year 2000, the zoo was already in the ‘mortuary’ and was like ready to be written off the books.’’
But the intervention of his firm, he said brought it back to life but without a prize: ‘‘The extent of its abandonment and decay, notwithstanding, Ogba Zoo experienced a painful rebirth through our rescue mission, which was purely self-financing, with no support from government.

‘‘But as challenging as reviving a moribund zoo was, there were other hidden challenges that can hardly be imagined in a sane society,’’ added Ehanire, who is also the secretary general of the Nigerian Association of Zoos and Parks (NAZAP), even as he narrated the several ordeals of the park.
‘‘It started as a minor incursion by community land grabbers into the zoo land until it was aided by official government instruments in the form of a gazette. All these years of battling the encroachment on the zoo, our private-sector led management was as good as left to solely tackle the growing menace unaided.
‘‘The land area encroached upon grew from about 10% of the zoo land that was ceded by the gazette, to more than 60% of the entire zoo. It was like a horror movie seeing bulldozers leveling priceless flora in this pristine conservation heritage that had been a classic urban forest rarely found anywhere in the world.’’