10
7DAYS
WEDNESDAY MAY 13, 2009
www.7days.ae/news
B
usiness is booming at Ismail
Dauda’s crocodile tannery in TRADE: Ismail Dauda
northern Nigeria, but displays the skins of
environmentalists fear soaring slaughtered crocodiles
demand for skins could be driving
the reptiles to extinction.
Thirty-five year-old Dauda followed
his father Maifata, whose name
means ‘The Skin Man’, into the
family business of tanning crocodile
and python pelts when he was just
15-years-old.
At his tannery in the old part of
Nigeria’s main northern city of Kano
dozens of workers clean and cure
the skins. In a good month they look
to “process” up to 20,000 animals.
“We have been tanning snake and
crocodile skins here for 120 years,
but in the last few years we had a
boost in our business... there is
more demand and there is more
market for it,” Dauda said.
Some crocodiles are still alive when
they are brought to the tannery.
After their jaws are roped together,
they are turned on their backs
before their throats are slit.
The meat is sold to people in the
south of the country and the skins,
once tanned, are exported to India,
Saudi Arabia and now to China, to
be made into high-quality leather
products such as bags and shoes.
Processed python skin sells for four
dollars a square metre, while a
crocodile pelt can bring in between
$40 and $170 depending on its size,
explained Dauda.
He took a wooden pole to stir a pit
containing a putrid smelling
concoction of ash, potash and soda
ash in which scores of python and
crocodile skins were being soaked.
“It is a fact the volume of supplies
has dropped in a decade which is
perhaps an indication the rate of
killing is higher than their
regeneration rate, but this is a
business we can’t stop because it is
very lucrative,” he said.
Environmental activists are furious
that crocodiles might soon face
extinction in Nigeria, especially if
their hides are simply going to
become accessories for the wealthy.
“The trade is unregulated, is illegal,
is not recorded. Two species are
almost extinct now,” Mathew Dore,
an environmentalist who has
worked with crocodiles for more
Skinned to
than 25 years, said.
He said the Nile crocodile, whose
skin carries the most value, is “very,
very scarce, almost extinct” in
Nigeria, and the last time he saw the
rarer long-snouted variety was 20
years ago in a zoo.
extinction
“The most abundant species now is
the West African dwarf crocodile,
most commonly found in the Niger
Species of crocodile face being wiped
Delta, and with all this oil pollution
and poverty issues, dependence on
out as trade in skins flourishes in Africa
the crocodile (market) is continuous
and unregulated,” he said from the
southern state of Edo. “It does not require much effort to and traders will be out of business.”
It is no coincidence the hide of the clear the skins at the airport. All you Dore said crocodile farming was
West African dwarf crocodile is not need to do is to pay the officials off,” virtually unheard of in Nigeria as
so prized for leather goods. Dauda said. “The officials at the would-be farmers looking for short-
“Ninety per cent of the skins are airport... sometimes visit this term profitability were often
from illegally hunted animals,” said tannery and we give them some gifts deterred by the gestation period.
the environmental activist Des- even if we have no goods to export.” Crocodiles do not reproduce until
mond Majekodunmi. Local Nigerian officials blamed the age five and so a farmer typically
“The population has been federal government for the failure to has to wait for ten or 15 years until
absolutely decimated. Immediate enforce the law. he can start selling animals, said
action needs to be taken, otherwise “The responsibility of stopping Dore, who tried to breed the
we will find our crocodile trade in the skins of endangered animals himself for a decade.
population has gone below the species such as crocodiles lies with The Nile crocodile was listed as
capacity to regenerate itself.” the federal government that ‘Lower Risk’ on the 1996 World
Local crocodile stocks have become controls the airports and security Conservation Union list of
so depleted hunters are now agencies,” state environment endangered species.
bringing in animals from commissioner Garba Yusuf said. The Convention on International
Cameroon, Chad and Ghana. “If the security agencies live up to Trade in Endangered Species of Wild
A 1985 Nigerian law supposed to their duty of arresting and Fauna and Flora lists the Nile
protect the crocodile and the python prosecuting offenders, the trade will crocodile as threatened with
does not stop their skins being sold be stopped because once it becomes extinction in certain areas and “not
at Lagos airport, right under the eyes impossible to export the skins the threatened, but trade must be
of customs agents. demand will drop and the tanners controlled” in others. PUTRID PIT: Python and crocodile skins are soaked together to clean them
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