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President Olusegun Obasanjo said on Thursday that Nigeria needs to secure US $44.5 million (five million naira) to implement a National Tree Nursery Programme.
The money, Obasanjo told a meeting on desertification attended by 11 northern state governors, was needed to complete several programmes, build 50 nursery centres with a combined annual capacity of 50 million seedlings and to replant about 26,000 deforested hectares by 2003, the Guardian daily reported on Friday.
During the meeting held at Katsina, in northern Katsina State, host governor Umaru Musa Yar'adua appealed for some of the money to be use to begin a shelter belt programme, that would plant a line of trees running across the northern border to prevent desert encroachment.
Obasanjo announced that smokeless coal, as an alternative to firewood, would become a household commodity before the end of the year. Yar'adua followed the president's comment by urging the government to establish coal processing plants so that the commodity could be commercially produced for rural communities.
In addition to desertification, Nigeria suffers from coastal and gully erosion, land devastation and aridity, the daily reported. Northern Nigeria is most threatened by deforestation, it added.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
