Heartbreaking footage showing an endangered manatee being tied up and dragged along a dirt road as it frantically tries to escape has sparked outcry in Nigeria.
Seven men were filmed pulling the manatee with ropes as its skin scraped across the ground and it frantically tried to stop the dragging with its flippers.
The country’s environment ministry has ordered a full investigation into the video, which was uploaded to social media on Saturday after being taken in the Niger delta region.
It is illegal to hunt manatees in Nigeria but they remain a target because their meat, oil and organs are used for traditional medicine.
Heartbreaking footage showed an endangered manatee being pulled along a dirt road with ropes in the Niger delta region has sparked outcry in Nigeria
The heart-wrenching video shows the manatee writhing as seven men drag it down a town’s main road.
The desperate animal flails its flippers trying to stop the dragging and, at one point, appears to cover its eyes as the pulling continues.
Shouts and yells can be heard in the background as many come forward to film the manatee’s plight with their mobile phones.
It is unclear when the clip was filmed, but it has been widely shared online.
Nigeria’s deputy environment minister, Sharon Ikeazor, on Sunday condemned the capture of the manatee and called for officials to investigate and rescue it.
‘My attention has been drawn to a very distressing and distasteful video of a captured manatee in the Niger Delta Region being dragged on bare ground to a cruel fate,’ she said on Twitter.
‘It is sad that manatees remain one of the most heavily hunted aquatic mammals,’ she said, adding that an awareness campaign was needed ‘to educate our people to protect the manatee’.
Nigeria’s environment ministry has ordered an investigation into the callous footage. It is illegal to hunt the animals in the country
The manatee was filmed being dragged through the street in a Nigerian town. Its skin scrapes across the road and it desperately flaps its flippers in a doomed attempt to escape
Deputy environment minister Sharon Ikeazor said she strongly condemns the video
Director of the African Aquatic Conservation Fund, Dr Lucy Diagne, told MailOnline that manatees are frequently killed in Nigeria despite being a protected species.
‘In a current threat assessment study I’m leading with three Nigerian colleagues, we have so far documented over 385 manatees killed, and we believe this to be a conservative number.
‘Dragging a live manatee down a street may not be a common occurrence in Nigeria, but killing them is.
‘Although the video doesn’t show the manatee being killed, I’m certain it was. People in many parts of Africa do illegally hunt manatees, it is their biggest threat.
‘Manatees also get caught accidentally in fishing nets, but are almost never released if still alive, as people value their meat too much.
‘I am encouraged by being contacted by the Minister of the Environment and hope she will be proactive in seeing that the men involved in the video, as well as illegal hunters throughout Nigeria, are arrested and the arrests publicised.’
One viewer described the video as ‘so sad’ and said ‘we need to treat all that breathes with kindness’, while a second said it was ‘just so sad’.
Another viewer said the video goes beyond endangered species and is ‘a matter of cruelty against animals’. ‘We need a reorientation,’ they said.
Other viewers, however, pointed to poverty in the region as the reason the manatee was hunted.
‘Madam Sharon when people are hungry, poor and unemployed… what do you think comes to their mind when they see a manatee?,’ one wrote.
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, there are an estimated 10,000 manatees along the coast of West Africa, but its population is rapidly declining.
Manatees, seen here in captivity in France, are often hunted in the poor Niger Delta region
Widespread poverty in the Niger Delta region, despite decades of oil-wealth, fuels the hunting of endangered animals.
Oil leaks along southern Nigeria have also damaged the natural habitat for manatees and other aquatic life.
According to the Wildlife Conservation Society in Nigeria, legislation protecting endangered species are rarely enforced by government agencies.