Talk:Ondo

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Page scope

Ondo treats Ondo State, in south-western Nigeria, as a cannabis growing area: the farms reported in its forests and forest reserves since 2011, the state's place in the national surveys and the growing practice the studies describe there. Nigeria's law on cannabis and the national figures are treated at Nigeria. The city of Ondo is a separate subject; a page on it would take the title Ondo (city).

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Why Ondo is a growing area

The 2019 cannabis survey of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (published 2022) covered six south-western states. It found the highest density of cultivation in Edo and Ondo, and the densest fields along the Edo–Ondo border (pp. 6, 10). It gives no area estimate for each state.
The NDLEA's annual reports give cannabis farmland destroyed in Ondo State for 2021, 2023, 2024 and 2025: 183.405 ha (2021 report, p. 36), 65 ha (2023 report, p. 55), 70 ha on four farms (2024 report, p. 64) and 82.72 ha on 41 farms (2025 report, p. 65). The 2023 report names Ondo among the four states with the largest concentrations of plantations over two years (p. 54). The 2019 report gives no breakdown by state.
Press reports of the NDLEA's statements name the forests where farms were destroyed: Ala forest (2017, 2022, 2023), Omolowo/Powerline, Ipele, Ogbese, and Utte and Okuluse (2022), Ofosu (2023), Ijare (2026), Ita-Ogbolu (2026) and the Okemoro Isinbode camp forest (2026). The police reported a farm at Emure Ile in 2011. Operation Thunderstorm (reported in May 2019) gives an area, 3,900.73 ha, but no forest names or dates.
Earlier, a United Nations study of 1999 names Ondo among the states where cannabis was widely grown, and Nigeria's reply to the UNODC questionnaire for 2003 placed 40 per cent of cultivation in Ondo.
The status is Active: the reports describe cannabis grown there from 2011 to 2026. The destruction of farms does not change it, since no source says that growing has ended.

Extent and border

The map border is approximate. It is drawn on Ondo State as mapped in OpenStreetMap (about 15,000 km², in two parts, the second a small piece of the coast in the south-west). The infobox area is rounded from it; the 2019 survey gives the state 14,527 km² (p. 37).
The state is the unit the national figures use. The named forests are spread across several local government areas: Akure North (Ala, Ogbese, Ago Oyibo), Ose (Utte and Okuluse), Ifedore (Ijare) and Owo (Emure Ile); the reports give no local government area for Ipele, Ofosu, Ita-Ogbolu or Okemoro. No source read maps the farms, and the forests are not mapped in the open data used, so the border could not follow them more closely.
The survey's densest fields lie along the Edo border. Farms on the Edo side are not included: the reports treat Edo State separately.
The point in the infobox is the centre of the state border, not a farm.

Sources

UNODC, Nigeria Cannabis Survey (2022). Read in full. The figures for prices, package sizes and the requirements for entering cannabis farming come from interviews with NDLEA officers in each state (pp. 25, 29).
NDLEA annual reports for 2021, 2023, 2024 and 2025. Read in the agency's PDFs; the farm tables give a row for Ondo State. The 2024 table was read by its layout, since the text extraction scrambles it.
February 2022 operation. The per-forest figures follow The Guardian (Lagos), which carries the NDLEA's statement in full. New Telegraph gives a different split (50 ha at Ogbese, 19 at Ipele, 58 at "Okeluse", 30 at Ala) and alone places Ipele in Ose; Vanguard, THEWILL and TheCable carry the same total of 255 ha. The NDLEA's own page for the statement could not be retrieved.
October 2017 operation. Daily Trust, BusinessDay and The Sun report it; all three give "more than 5,000 hectares", a figure attributed to the agency. The state commander's words on the other forest reserves are taken from The Sun and his words on the season from BusinessDay.
Kolo et al. (2022) and Lawal et al. (2025) were read in full. Lawal et al. call the crop both hemp and Cannabis sativa; the study is of drug cannabis planted in the reserve. The DOI printed on its page (10.5281/e7n9st67) does not resolve and is not used.
Azeez and Aluko (2019). Read in full. The remark on Indian hemp planters is one participant's, quoted in the study (p. 621); the study does not say in which of the two reserves it was made.

Sources not used

Reports of cannabis seized in forests without a farm being destroyed are not used as evidence of growing, though they name places in the state: Ago Dada (2013), Ukugu forest at Ipele (2023), Ala forest (a warehouse, 2024), Ayede near Ogbese (2025), Igoba forest (2025) and Eleyewo (2026). The seed seizure at Ago Oyibo (2021) is used, because the commander tied it to planting.
The Ondo command's statement of July 2024 that it had destroyed more than 56 ha of "suspected" farmland that year names no place; the annual report's figure for 2024 is used instead.
Reports that the growers or workers arrested came from other states (Vanguard 2011, The Sun 2017) are not used: each rests on one official or one community leader.
A report of a plantation of about six square kilometres in a forest reserve at Owo (IRIN, date unknown) could not be retrieved.
Abikoye et al. (2019, Bulletin on Narcotics) name Ondo among the south-western states where cannabis is mainly grown, and Oladeji and Fatukasi (2017) list cannabis growing among the threats to the Osse River Park in Ose; both rest on NDLEA and state reports, not their own fieldwork in Ondo, and are not cited.
Asuni (1964) counts 22 plantations found in 1962 in the old Western Region, which then included Ondo Province, and prints a map of them; the map was not seen, so the page does not place any of those plantations in Ondo.
Awonyemi et al. (2026, a preprint) call Ondo a major hub of cultivation, citing a newspaper; Odeigah et al. (2025) mention the rainforest of Ondo, Ekiti and Ogun in passing, citing other work. Neither is used.