Thursday, 28th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search

NCF urges support for reforestation agenda

By Olayide Soaga
06 June 2022   |   2:41 am
To limit the impact of climate change, the Director-General, Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF), Dr. Muktari Aminu-Kano, has appealed to Nigerians and critical stakeholders

Forestation

To limit the impact of climate change, the Director-General, Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF), Dr. Muktari Aminu-Kano, has appealed to Nigerians and critical stakeholders to join the reforestation efforts in the environment sector.

He lamented that Nigeria is one of the countries with the highest forest destruction and deforestation rate, warning that there has to be a change of attitude.

Aminu-Kano said this at the commencement of the 8,000 tree seedling planting project organised by NCF in partnership with American Towers Company (ATC) Nigeria, a firm which provides telecommunication base stations in Lagos.

About 60 tree seedlings were planted in Lekki Conservation Centre and Grace Island, a suburb of Lekki during the exercise by members of the foundation, environmental enthusiasts, staff and representatives of ATC.

Deforestation threatens the sustainability of the environment and puts the economy and the citizens of a country at risk of climate change effects. Although the Great Green Wall in Nigeria has made progress in the land restoration of over 3,892 hectares of land, the DG emphasised the need to plant more trees in Nigeria as their relevance to the economy and environment cannot be overemphasised.

He said: “You have more watershed when you have more trees. You have enriched soil where you have trees but by destroying trees through deforestation, we are bound to lose the high services that are provided by these trees. Though, government has made pledges with the international community, it is up to Non-Governmental Organisations and individuals, who are environmental enthusiasts to achieve the mandate.”

He also called on state and non-state stakeholders to take back the forests from bandits and terrorists, who have made the forest their abode and continually use them to perpetuate banditry and terrorism.

Corroborating the DG, NCF Head Environmental Education, Abidemi Balogun, said every country ought to have a minimum of 28 per cent of its landmass covered with forests.

According to her, there are lots of factors that contributed to the degradation of forest cover in Nigeria. This, according to her, includes logging and desertification.

“ATC wishes to mitigate the carbon footprint. For us at the foundation, our goal is to achieve at least thirty per cent of Nigeria’s forest cover in theory years, hence the partnership. NCF has an initiative called Green Recovery Nigeria and ATC is contributing their quota. We are simply helping each other to achieve each other’s goals and objectives,” she said.

The tree-planting project is not limited to Lagos, other states of the country including Oyo, Delta, Enugu, Anambra, Nasarawa and Kwara will also benefit from the project.

0 Comments