*President pledges $550,000 Nigeria contribution to the building of the Great Green Wall Secretariat
By Bob MajiriOghene Etemiku
Abuja, Nigeria – President Muhammadu Buhari, at the Banquet Hall, State House, Aso Villa said that Nigeria is working round the clock to transit to a low carbon emission economy.
In a speech read on his behalf on Thursday by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) at the Flag off of the National Tree Planting Campaign, commemorating the ‘margin’ of the 8th Ordinary Session of the Council of Ministers of the Pan African Agency of the Great Green Wall (PAGGW), President Buhari also said that he had directed the Federal Ministry of Environment to coordinate the release of a Prado Jeep and a pick up van for the use of the PAGGW Secretariat and Allied Agencies.
President Buhari announced that Nigeria had fulfilled the payment of an outstanding contribution of about $654,291,000 and pledged the sum of $550,000 as Nigeria’s contribution to the building of the Great Green Wall Secretariat.
‘The impact of climate change is already with us in Nigeria and indeed in Africa, manifesting in various ways: conflicts trigger; food insecurity, drying up of lakes, loss of livelihood and youth migration among others.
The trend is the same in many other countries that are threatened by forest fires, rising sea levels, drought and desertification.
We are especially facing a receding Lake Chad with all its attendant benefits-fisheries, dry season farming and all other associated value chain etc all receding due to climate change and conflict factors’, President Buhari said.
The Great Green Wall of the Sahara and the Sahel is a project led by the African Union, initially conceived as a way to halt desertification in the Sahel Region, and block its expansion.
At the 7th Session of the PAGGW in Mauritania, African countries made up of Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Mauritania and the Sudan endorsed Nigeria to produce the next chairman of the Summit of Heads of State and Governments of the regional organisation.
In his speech, President Buhari commended the current initiatives by the international technical and financial partners/institutions for pledging financial resources to support the implementation of the Great Green Wall Initiative.
‘The early disbursement of the pledged resources without stringent conditionalities would indeed see the transformation of our degraded ecosystems.
I therefore, in my capacity as the President of the Conference of Heads of States and Government of Member States, direct the Honourable Minister of Finance of Nigeria to lead the Initiative to access the funds pledged by our Partners under the Great Green Wall Accelerator’, President Buhari said.
