Though a significant volume of information has been documented on the importance and potential of NTFPs’ utilisation and its impacts on poverty reduction, livelihoods improvement and environmental sustainability, a lot of confusion is still associated with NTFPs semantics and terminologies. NTFPs have proved to be difficult to clearly define because of the
blurred boundaries between timber and non-timber products and the underlying difficulty in defining a forest. The overabundance
of terminologies relating to a single term having a range of interpretations, and none of which is universally recognised is at the heart of the NTFPs semantic confusion. Consequently, the meaning of “NTFPs” has generated a lot of controversy. In other words, there is no universally accepted operational definition of NTFPs. Various definitions proposed in literature tend to expound on specific species, aspects and products according to different authors’ focal interests.