Bola Atta, the Managing Director and CEO of the UBA Foundation, stood in the grounds of King’s College, Lagos, and watched students push saplings into the soil. The tree-planting exercise that morning was not just about adding greenery to one of Nigeria’s oldest schools. It was about what happens next.
Atta had a specific goal. She wanted the students to understand that the environment “needs our collective support and protection.” That is the core of the Foundation’s 2026 Tree Planting for Sustainability Initiative, which kicked off on June 10 at King’s College and CMS Grammar School in Bariga. The initiative is now in its fourth year. The question hanging over this year’s event is whether the young people who planted those trees will actually become the ambassadors the program needs them to be.
The Foundation is betting on it. By choosing King’s College and CMS Grammar School — two institutions with deep history and, crucially, the capacity to sustain environmental projects — the UBA Foundation is trying to plant roots that outlast a single ceremony. The schools themselves become the long-term caretakers. If the trees die in a dry season, the program fails. If the students water them, the idea spreads.
World Environment Day, observed annually on June 5 and coordinated by the United Nations, provided the backdrop. The 2026 theme, “Inspired by Nature. For Climate. For Our Future,” is a direct call to action. But the UBA Foundation’s real work happens after the banner is taken down. The tree-planting is the visible part. The invisible part is whether the students at these schools absorb the lesson that sustainability is not a one-day event.
Atta described the initiative as a “strategic investment in the future.” That phrase carries weight. A strategic investment implies a return. For the Foundation, the return is a generation of young Nigerians who treat environmental protection as a daily habit, not a school assignment. The initiative is now in its fourth year, meaning the first cohort of student ambassadors has already moved on. The Foundation will be watching to see if those early participants carried the message beyond the school gate.
The choice of CMS Grammar School, founded in 1859, and King’s College, founded in 1909, was deliberate. These are not anonymous schools. They are institutions with alumni networks, political connections, and public visibility. If the tree-planting initiative succeeds at these two schools, it creates a template that can be replicated. If it fails, the failure is equally visible.
The UBA Foundation is the Corporate Social Responsibility arm of the United Bank for Africa Group. That means the program has corporate backing. But corporate backing alone does not change behavior. The Foundation is integrating sustainability practices into school communities. That is the hard part. It requires teachers to maintain the trees, students to care for them, and principals to prioritize the project over the next exam schedule.
The 2026 initiative is being implemented across selected schools in Nigeria. The Foundation has not yet released the full list. But the Lagos launch at King’s College and CMS Grammar School sets a high bar. Both schools have the space, the history, and the institutional memory to keep the program alive. Other schools in the program may not have those advantages.
Atta emphasized the importance of “encouraging sustainable practices that will help create healthier communities and a better future for all.” That is the long game. The short game is making sure the trees survive the rainy season. The medium game is making sure the students who planted them remember why they did it. The Foundation has four years of experience to draw on. The results of those first four years will determine whether this year’s planting is a continuation or a reset.
