By Ayodele Oni
The Federal Government has admitted that the menace of the bandits and kidnappers, in almost every forest, is a threat to the Great Green Wall project aimed at fencing the Country from desert encroachment.
The Minister of Environment, Balarabe Abbas Lawal, stated that bandits have taken over the Nigerian forests to terrorize the people.
He, however, assured that the Government was planning to flush out the criminals and get rid of them without delay.
The Minister made the remarks in Kaduna, at the two-day top management retreat, organized by the ministry assuring that security forces would be deployed to flush out bandits and kidnappers responsible for insecurity in those hidden places.
He explained that though Park Rangers and some Forest Guards were put in place, they were not enough to tackle the bandits and other criminals.
At the retreat themed: “Policy Embedment and Prioritization of Key Action For a Renewed Hope in Environmental Management” were the Minister of State for Environment, Directors in the Ministry, heads of agencies under the Ministry, and resource persons.
Lawal stated that “We have a very serious issue with our forests; our forests have become hibernation grounds for bandits, poachers and kidnappers. So, the only way we can save the forests and save our communities is to do something very drastic about it.
“We need to get enough force into the forests to clean them of these miscreants that have turned our forest into something else. So, we are on it. We have similar issues in oil areas and mining sites.
“Government will come up with a very strong measure of trying to get enough forces into the forests and flush these people out because if we don’t do that, there is no way we are going to make progress in our great green wall, where we have invested a lot of money in trying to fence Nigeria from the encroachment of the desert.
“We already have Park Rangers and some Forest Guards, but they are ineffective because the boots on the ground are not enough to tackle the challenges we have.
“They don’t have enough force to confront the bandits and the rest of them. We have started doing something about this, that is why I visited the Minister of Blue Economy two days ago because they are also talking about the issue of Coastal Guards, taking a queue from what Americans did when they were bedeviled by piracy in the 16th and 17th centuries.”
He pointed out that the retreat underscored the significance of the National Climate Change Policy and the pivotal role it plays in shaping the participants’ collective efforts at addressing the challenges.
“To accelerate Ogoni Clean up, participants of this retreat need to brainstorm on strategies to increase government commitment and support, improve capacity building, enhance monitoring and evaluation, create public awareness as well as, explore various conflict resolution mechanisms, and international collaboration in Ogoni Land.
“Reclaiming brownfields and greyfields into sustainable livelihood support system across the country, we collectively have to think of ways to do this through environmental restoration, economic development, and community well-being.
“This retreat should explore means of easily identifying, assessing, and mitigating the potential environmental and social impacts of all proposed projects before it is approved and implemented
“We should devise means to implement an economic system designed to eliminate waste and promote the continual use of resources.
“We should also ensure safe deployment of modern biotechnologies and new breeding techniques in agriculture, through consideration of the involvement of a combination of regulatory oversight, scientific scrutiny, and public engagement.”
