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B N W: Biafra Nigeria World News |
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Why desert encroachment persists, by minister
NIGERIAN leaders' non-implementation of policies and programmes to curb desertification and coastal land degradation have been blamed for the current deplorable state of the country's environment.
The Minister of State for Environment, Col. Bala Mande, stated this in Bamayamari on Wednesday while inspecting the National Shelter Belt and Afforestation project in Yobe State. Governor Bukar Abba Ibrahim was also on the trip.
Mande observed that the country's leaders from the independence era until now never gave the problems of environment important attention by including them as national issues, which affect the people.
He said that because of the lip-service paid by previous government to the environment, virtually all the policies on afforestation projects had failed.
The minister said that "government at the national and state levels including the councils could not fully implement any of the projects on the environment."
He said that whether it was national tree planting or coastal erosion, none of the two had realised its objectives in protecting the environment.
He said that the Obasanjo administration had put in place concrete policies and programmes on the contrsol and management of the environment.
The programme, he said included the institutionalisation of how to control and manage the nation's fragile environment in the North and South, declaring that the management of the environment would be comprehensive, integrated and holistic in implementation.
The National Council on Shelter Belt, Desertification, Afforestation, Erosion and Coastal Land Management, he said had been inaugurated by President Olusegun Obasanjo.
The council, he explained, would collaborate with all the state governments and other stakeholders in the implementation of projects on the environment.
Twelve states from the North in conjunction with the Federal Government will soon launch a new offensive against environment degradation, the minister said.
Mande also commended the moves of the Yobe government in the management and control of desertification in the last five years.
The state government through the Ministry of Environment has spent over N1 billion in the raising of 25 million tree seedlings and the establishment of Gum Arabic plantations as well sand dune fixation in the desert prone areas of the state.
Mande said that of all the states he had visited in the North, Yobe was more committed to the fight against desertification and its encroachment.
He urged other states to emulate Yobe to check further desert encroachment in their states.
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