GOOD IDEA, BUT…

By Nick Dazang 

Last week, the Vice President, Kashim Shettima, was on a state visit to Ethiopia. Central to his visit was the launch of Ethiopia’s Green Legacy Initiative.
During the said visit, Mr. Shettima toured facilities such as the Adama Dairy Farms, the Luke Avocado Nursery, Shera Dibandiba Mojo Family Integrated Farm, Biyyo Poultry Farm and the Bishoftu Pea Farm.

At the end of the tour, which was aimed at strengthening bilateral ties with Ethiopia in agriculture and industrial development, the Vice President declared that Nigeria intended to plant 20 billion trees, beginning from this rainy season, as part of its reforestation and environmental sustainability efforts.
The Vice President enthused:”We intend to plant 20 billion trees in the next rainy season. It requires a lot of planning, energy and drive, which Ethiopia was able to galvanize its population into doing.
“I was overwhelmed with joy that the real economic renaissance of Africa is in the offing. Ethiopia has become the pathfinder, the front runner in us reclaiming our pride and continent”.
It is not clear if the Vice President’s declaration was predicated on a well thought out and articulated policy or it was merely inspired by the impressive accomplishments of Ethiopia in the field of agriculture.

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Bowled over or wowed by Ethiopia’s achievements, his pronouncement is an idea whose time has come. As Victor Hugo once succinctly put it, “No force on earth can stop an idea whose time has come”. Except that tree planting and reforestation, on the massive scale contemplated by the Vice President, ought to have begun decades ago and sustained up to now.
As a matter of fact, it is not as if there were no such concerted efforts. Musa Daggash, a former Permanent Secretary and Minister was noted for his uncommon zeal in this regard. He championed the planting of neem trees particularly in the sehalian parts of the country in order to arrest desertification. Between 1949-1950, Daggash, then a Forest Assistant, was instrumental to planting 43,000 neem trees in Maiduguri and another 100,000 in the defunct Borno Province. A swathe of Forestry Reserves were created. These were curated and superintended by professionally trained Forestry Officers. Unfortunately, this zeal tapered off.
Decades after, and by and by, not only were the forest reserves taken over by the rich and land speculators, the Forestry Officers were consigned to oblivion.

Compounding this, subsequent tree planting campaigns became hollow, annual rituals. Our Emirs and Chiefs, elaborately swaddled in turbans, would plant trees in the full glare of television klieg lights and withdraw to the comfort of their palaces without robustly sensitizing their subjects as to the importance of the exercise. Trees were felled with frenzy and deployed to fire our kitchens. Such felled trees were hardly replaced by new ones.
In no time, some parts of the north, which hitherto boasted of some vegetation, became desiccated and denuded of trees. The Sahara desert encroached with ferocity. The rest is an unwholesome legacy of anguish and agony. This legacy is characterized by forced movement of millions of people from the dry parts to the more verdant and lush states of the country. This legacy is framed by climate change, which in turn, has fostered a series of vicious and murderous farmer-herder clashes.

This legacy has also engendered drought, erratic rain falls and flash flooding. The most devastating of these floods took place in 2022. Caused by unprecedented rainfall, the length and breath of this country was flooded. Kogi State was submerged. Bayelsa State was severed from civilization. Not less than 700 Nigerians were killed, 1.4 million people were displaced and 440,000 hectares of farmland were destroyed.

These floods have become the new normal. This year alone, by the reckoning of the Nigeria Meteorological Agency(NiMet), eight states are likely to be flooded. Mokwa, a town in Niger State, was recently flooded, following a heavy downpour. Five hundred people died. Six hundred others, who were initially declared missing, have now been officially presumed dead. This brings the total to 1, 100,000 lives lost in the unfortunate Mokwa flood.

This huge loss of precious lives and properties could have been averted if we had done the right thing. At least the scale and the frequency with which farmer-herder conflicts occur today, leaving in their trails death and destruction, could have been mitigated.
Yet, it is better late than never. Planting of trees, and in the proportion contemplated by the Vice President, is an inevitability. Climate change, and the havoc it wreaks, has become an existential threat.

Even then, we must walk the talk. The government must demonstrate resolve. It must lead the way in this campaign so that ordinary folks can follow. Tree planting campaigns across the country, and particularly in the north, which is the worst-hit, must begin immediately. Our Forestry Officers must be activated and empowered to perform their duties.
Nigerians must be educated on the need to plant trees and to do so with the urgency this requires. Our mobilization agencies such as the National Orientation Agency(NOA), the Media, Traditional Rulers, Environmentally-focused Non-governmental organizations, faith-based organizations and youth and women groups should be deployed to sensitize the people to appreciate that the planting of trees is the anti-dote to the climate change and the flash floods we are experiencing; that planting of trees will arrest desertification and farmer-herder conflicts; that planting of trees will enrich and revitalize our soils, thereby making them fertile; and that planting of trees will also make the weather more clement and tolerable.

Our people should also be educated to appreciate that a tree planting campaign is not a one-off thing or a day’s affair but that it is a continuous and sustained activity.

And as we embrace tree planting as a way of life and culture, we must refrain from indiscriminate felling of trees. We should also embrace the use of gas for cooking. Gas is faster, cleaner and available. The government should incentivize Nigerians by making it cheaper and a viable alternative.

Nick Dazang is Nigerian based Public Affairs Analyst