If We Allow Desertification, Poverty Would Worsen, And We Would Have Ourselves To Blame – VP Osinbajo

Nigeria’s Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, on Tuesday in Abuja said desertification in several states in the north was very dangerous hence the need to attack it with a lot of fervor. He made the statement while receiving a delegation of the National Agency for the Great Green Wall (NAGGW), led by its Director-General, Mr Goni Ahmed.

While commending the agency’s documentary presentation at the meeting, Prof. Osinbajo said “if we allow desertification, poverty would worsen, and we would have ourselves to blame”.

“So we have to take the matter very seriously.”

Speaking with State House Press Corps after the meeting, Ahmed said the delegation came to brief the Vice President on the activities of the Agency.

“The critical issue we discussed with the Vice President is to get the land where the great green wall will establish its own biological corridor. That is to talk to the states so that land will be made available.

“We also want the state governments to take on board the activities of the agency and bring part of the ecological fund, plow it into the Great Green Wall activities’’, he said.

The director general said the delegation informed Osinbajo of the magnitude of the problems in the field, “because this is where you get the most poverty-stricken area, the place where you have almost about 43 per cent of Nigeria’s land under threat.

“This is the place where the bulk of the livestock in Nigeria is produced and it is being overrun by desertification, climate change.’’

According to Ahmed, the Great Green Wall by the Act that established it, is only operating in 11 states which we call the front-line states.

Osinbajo also met with a delegation from the Partnership for Child Development (PCD), Imperial College, United Kingdom which is supporting the federal government’s Homegrown School Feeding Programme.

The programme is an important component of the Buhari presidency’s Social Investment plans in the forthcoming 2016 budget.

The delegation was led by PCD’s Executive Director, Dr Lesley Drake. [NAN]