Climate Change: Gov Yusuf to plant 1Om trees in Kano

By Faridat Salifu

In a bold step towards combating climate change devastation in Nigeria, Governor Abba Gida Yusuf has unveiled a grand plan to plant 10 million trees in Kano State by 2027.

The first phase of the massive reforestation plan was flagged off yesterday with the planting of three million trees across the 44 Local Government Areas of Kano state.

It will be recalled that NatureNews, Africa’s foremost newspaper on environment and climate change, recently disclosed its landmark initiative to launch a national campaign for planting 5 billion trees in Nigeria by 2030.

The tree planting campaign embarked on by the Kano State Government is in collaboration with the Agro-Climatic Resilience in Semi-Arid Landscapes (ACReSAL), a World Bank program in Nigeria.

To flag off the four year project, Governor Yusuf who planted a tree at the gate of Government House said the essence of his action was to symbolically encourage residents to come out and participate in the tree planting exercise across the state.

His words: ”The exercise will be along the major roads across the metropolitan Local Government Areas of the state, to encourage the people to come out en-masse to start planting trees in their houses, on the roads as well as all the other places.”

”Most of the trees that are old in the state have been cut off by so many users, and to ensure that the older ones are replaced in conjunction with ACReSAL, a World Bank programme, we purchased so many of those seedlings.

“So far, we have chosen about three million seedlings that will be distributed across all the 44 Local Government Areas of the stae, he said, adding that the largest share of about 1.2 million will be distributed across major streets in the metropolitan areas.”

In his remarks at the ceremony, the Project Coordinator, Dr. Dahir Muhammad Hashim said the project was also aimed at arresting the menace of climate change, which has exposed Kano State to excessive heat of recent.

He noted that with the three million trees to be planted this year, a total of over 10 million trees will be planted and protected before the end of the first term of Governor Yusuf’s administration in 2027.

In annoucing the “Nigeria Green Project 2030”, Publisher/Editor-in-Chief of NatureNews, Aliu Akoshile, had urged stakeholders in public and private sectors to embrace the ambitious afforestation initiative aimed at planting 5 billion trees in Nigeria.

He described the initiative as a product of extensive consultation with relevant stakeholders and rigorous brainstorming by the NatureNews editorial team.