Tanshi’s “Green Nobel Prize”: The ignored good news

There are many Nigerians who have stopped watching the news or reading the newspapers because of the bad news that dominates Nigerian news. This includes Nigerians who are in Nigeria and abroad. Every day, Nigeria produces enough bad headlines to fill a newspaper before breakfast. And it is not the fault of the newspapers or broadcast media. They are simply reporting the news.

If the power grid is not collapsing, a group of schoolchildren is being abducted. If a community is not being burned down by bandits, a leader is being accused of embezzling the money meant for education, security, health, and roads. If Nigerian leaders are not shown frolicking while Nigerians are suffering, they are reported to give a speech explaining why Nigerians need to sacrifice for a better future.

For many people outside Nigeria, that is the country they know. For many people inside Nigeria, that is the country they are tired of. But that is not the full story.

Far from the noise of Lagos and Abuja and the endless theatre of politics, Nigerians keep doing remarkable things. They keep building, solving, discovering, teaching, healing, and leading. They keep flying the Nigerian flag proudly. Most times, they do it without government help and sometimes despite government failure.

One of the latest examples is Dr Iroro Tanshi, the 41-year-old Nigerian conservation ecologist who has just won the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize, one of the world’s most respected honours for grassroots environmental work. The Goldman Environmental Prize is often called the Green Nobel Prize because of the prestige it commands. Tanshi was recognised for protecting the endangered short-tailed roundleaf bat and helping communities around Cross River State prevent destructive wildfires in and around the Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary. Between 2022 and 2025, her team and local fire brigades responded to more than 70 fire outbreaks and stopped serious wildfires from spreading.

It is an impressive achievement, especially in a country where the government and the citizens believe that conservation is not a priority. Trees are cut down to erect buildings. Forests are indiscriminately cleared to create housing estates and factories. Animals are hunted to extinction.

But it is also a typical Nigerian story, because it follows a familiar pattern: citizens playing the role of government because government repeatedly fails to play its role. It is the duty of the government to ensure that forests are protected, rural communities are protected, and wildlife is protected. But in a country where the government does not even play its primary role of ensuring the security and welfare of the people, how can the protection of forests and wildlife be its priority?

Most Nigerians grow up learning that waiting for the government to play its role is like waiting for Godot. So, people step in. That is what Tanshi did. She found both a scientific problem and a human one. The bats were endangered, yes, but the danger was tied to people’s lives. Farmers used fire to clear land for planting. Small fires often grew into wildfires. Forests, farms, villages and the bats all suffered.

Then there was another challenge: belief. Many Nigerians grow up seeing bats as evil creatures.

Some believe they are linked to witchcraft. Some see them as dirty things that deserve to be killed. Bats sleep during the day when other birds and animals are awake and fly at night. That is how witches and wizards are believed to operate. Many people are not sure whether bats should be called birds or animals.

In addition, fear is a powerful enemy which destroys faster than fire. Tanshi did not fight that fear with insults or lectures from a distance. She worked with the people. She explained and listened. She organised local fire brigades. She helped communities see that protecting the forest also meant protecting their farms and their future.

That is leadership which does not require a title, a convoy, a press conference or a press statement. And that is why her victory matters beyond conservation. It makes us remember that Nigeria continuously produces people who solve problems instead of merely describing them or complaining about them.

In different parts of Nigeria, it is the same story. The only problem is that Nigeria rarely celebrates them. Across the world, Nigerians are doing work that commands respect: doctors, researchers, politicians, writers, athletes, entrepreneurs, teachers, and scientists. Many of them were trained in Nigeria, leaving in their adulthood because they were not happy with the misgovernance at home. They carry the Nigerian discipline, humour, tenacity, and that refusal to surrender.

It is one of the great contradictions of our national life. We often struggle to build strong systems at home, yet we keep producing strong people all over the world. The headlines scream failure every day, but the people keep churning out results.

This is why reducing Nigeria to stories of misgovernance, insecurity and corruption is a dangerous single story. Yes, leadership is terrible in Nigeria. It should never be glossed over. Bad governance is expensive. It steals time, money, hope, human capital, and lives. But if that becomes the only story, we create another problem: national blindness. We stop seeing excellence because we are too busy analysing disappointment. That is dangerous. Nigerians at home and abroad are recording exploits regularly. Most times, the deluge of bad news overshadows it.

There is also a lesson for the government in this, if the government will ever learn any lesson from any situation. Imagine what Nigeria could look like if institutions matched the quality of its people. Imagine roads built with the same seriousness Nigerians bring to surviving bad roads. Imagine schools run with the same discipline Nigerian parents use to push their children to success. Imagine public service with the same hunger Nigerians show when they move abroad and finally enter systems that work.

The talent is not missing. What is missing is the structure. And until those changes are made, many Nigerians will continue doing extraordinary things while carrying burdens they should never have had to carry alone. Nigerians have been turned to mini governments.

That should inspire us, but it should also embarrass leadership, if anything can still embarrass our leadership. Citizens should not always have to rescue the nation from neglect or mediocrity. Still, there is pride in knowing they can. Iroro Tanshi’s prize is not just about bats in Cross River. It is about what happens when one person decides that a problem is worth tackling until a positive result is achieved. It is about Nigerians who keep repairing the country from the edges while politicians and their enabling followers destroy it from the centre.

The world noticed Tanshi. We should notice what she represents, because Nigeria is more than its politics. The people also matter. It is the people who still give Nigeria a semblance of hope. They are the ones doing the work that brings Nigeria glory.

    X: @BrandAzuka