Nigeria’s Minister of Environment, Mr Mohammed Abdullahi has said that the Federal Government has recovered arable lands in the northern parts of the country from a baseline of 90 hectares in 2019 to 6,007 hectares as of the second quarter of 2022.
Abdullahi said that the ministry had also increased the number of trees, orchards and woodlots from 1,080 to 9,048,900 in 2022.
According to him, the ministry constructed 21 motorised boreholes in Zamfara, Sokoto, Yobe and Borno states and other states that are part of the 11 frontline states under the Great Green Wall (GGW) programme as part of the ministry’s effort to address deforestation.
He said that the boreholes were constructed to provide water for irrigation and support other agricultural activities in the states as efforts are being made to enhance the livelihood of the community and stimulate sustainable development as well as mitigate the effect of climate change.
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The minister further stated that the ministry had trained and equipped 2,136 people with vocational skills in the alternative livelihood scheme, and about 8,705 solar home lightening systems were distributed to households in the 11 frontlines states while the ministry has also established 250 hectares of low-pressure drip irrigation marketable gardens for rural women across the frontline states and conducted 165 school outreach programmes across the states.
On tree planting, Abdullahi said that the ministry had so far planted 945,240 trees, and recovered and restored over 128.5 hectares of land with more than 421,992 tree seedlings planted.
To facilitate the achievement of the presidential initiative on afforestation for the establishment of 25 million trees, the ministry had developed a draft policy framework for implementation of the National Land Degradation Neutrality in the country and in a bid to stem the incessant menace of annual flooding across the country, the ministry has prepared a National Policy on Erosion and Flood Control.
Story was adapted from environnewsnigeria.
