NCF partners Julius Berger, Army to sustain green environment

In a bid to promote green revolution in the country, the Nigeria Conservation Foundation (NCF) is to partner with Julius Berger Nigeria, the Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria and Nigeria Army to plant 2000 trees to sustain green environment, control deforestation and combat global warming. At a tree planting event held on Thursday, at the […]

In a bid to promote green revolution in the country, the Nigeria Conservation Foundation (NCF) is to partner with Julius Berger Nigeria, the Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria and Nigeria Army to plant 2000 trees to sustain green environment, control deforestation and combat global warming.

At a tree planting event held on Thursday, at the Muhammadu Buhari Cantonment in Abuja, the Zonal Coordinator of NCF Mohammed Garba Boyi, who represented the DG, Dr. Joseph Onoja, in a remark, gave a brief history of the NCF in Nigeria.

According to the Director General, the NCF, whose head office is in Lagos, is a non governmental organization that was established over 45 years ago with the mandate on biodiversity conservation, protecting endangered species, combating climate change, building partnership, collaboration and institutional strengthening, and to promote sustainable development in Nigeria.

The Director General also commended Julius Berger Nigeria for funding the tree planting project and its move to support a healthy environment.

He said: “what we intend to do in terms of conserving biodiversity in the country, we have developed, or come up with an initiative, which we call it, green recovery Nigeria.

“This is an initiative that is meant actually to salvage the situation in which our vegetation happens to be, because according to the statistics, we have less than 10% of our vegetation cover left. So we, as an organization, we feel we need to contribute our quota to address this.

“You know, by doing this we are also complementing the government activity of planting trees. So our goal, by the year 2030, we should be able to improve the Nigerian vegetation cover from the current status to at least 25%, we have started doing this already, because three years back, we did.”

“We planted over 3 million trees across the Six Geopolitical regions in Nigeria, and we are not actually doing it alone. We mobilize resources from other stakeholders that are very interested in terms of improving the vegetation cover of Nigeria.”

“I must sincerely use this opportunity to thank Julius Berger Nigeria for providing the resources, the funding to secure this 2,000 seedlings we are planting.”

Stressing on the importance of trees in the environment, Dr Onoja stated that trees play a major role in sustaining humans and the environment in the area of food and preservation of the eco system.

He continued, “I don’t need to go back to start emphasizing or outlining the significance of trees obviously we know that trees, provide shade, apart from shade, some trees also provide fruits which are really edible. And again they curtail the impact of climate change, which in fact, we are seeing and climate change is real. Again, we know that we have threats like desertification, flooding if you have trees in an environment, you know they mitigate they mitigate the mentioned threats. So trees are very, very important.

The NFC Director General, similarly commended the military in joining the fight against global warming, stating that, the army didn’t cut down any tree in the process of erecting structures in their barracks.

In his words, “I must commend the military, especially you know this barrack, because if you look around, you can see the place is fresh and green.”

“They have not actually in the course of developing or erecting structures, destroyed the existing trees. So honestly speaking, we must give you this commendation, and again, also thank you for giving us space to come and do this planting.”

“You see why we emphasize in planting indigenous trees, is because they are really ours, they are beautiful and again, they have economic values, for example the species we provided, are four and all of them are indigenous.”

“We have the Parkia biglobosa, which is a very common species in the northern part of the country. This is the plant we extract the fruits or seeds to produce the local maggi we also have Syzygium guineense, we call it Malmo. It also has some economic values, because it produces berries, which we use to prepare drinks, same with the other two species, we brought, that is Magnifera Indica, which is mango and Khaya senegalensis. We decided not to bring the grafted Mango but our own indigenous which is not grafted.”

“the species, we provided are purely indigenous, it is our desire, that when they grow, they can provide shade, people can even harvest them to eat and then maybe generate some income. So in this context, I want to use this opportunity to thank the Nigerian army, specifically the Chief of Army Staff, for allowing us to come and do this planting in the barrack. And, of course, to the Honorable Minister, because we’ve been collaborating with almost all the agencies that are under the domain of the federal ministry of environment. This is a collaboration that we started some years ago. We’re assuring you we will continue.

“The collaboration will not loose it value and we will be doing as much as we can to contribute our quota in terms of improving Nigeria environment. And, of course, to our sponsors, Julius Berger, we are thanking you sincerely for giving us this fund to be able to carry out this activity. As the Chief of Army Staff said, planting tree is one activity. maintaining it is also another thing. ”

“In this context, we’re assuring Julius beggar, Nigerian Conservation Foundation and the Nigerian Army specifically, this barrack will not disappoint you. The trees will be maintained, allowed to grow and produce fruits and there will be a time where we’ll invite you to come and see these trees. We will also invite you to come and harvest from the proceeds of this intervention,” Dr Onoja concluded.

On his part, representative of Julius Berger Nigeria, Mr. Emmanuel Isibor, Manager Media Relations, who lauded the initiative noted that it resonates with JGN vision on healthy environment.

He said, “We identify with this initiative, and it demonstrates our commitment to the fight against climate change. We want to congratulate Nigerian army and other stakeholders in this endeavor.

“And like Mr. Boyi earlier said, we hope in due course, we’ll come and partake in the harvest of the produce of the tree. Like I told him just now, I said we will come and harvest the mangoes instead.” “Thank you very much”.