Daily Independent (Lagos)
Michael Simire
12 January 2009
Housing provision is set to receive a major boost in the northern part of the country, where some aridity-prone states have been pencilled down to benefit from a multi-billion naira project aimed at providing shelter and curbing desert encroachment.
The endeavour, which is coming under the African continent's Great Green Wall (GGW) project, would see a firm of developers, FramanAgridev, investing a staggering N300 billion to build 11,000 houses in 11 states. The GGW is being promoted locally by the Federal Ministry of Environment.
The states include Sokoto, Zamfara, Kano, Jigawa, Bauchi and Gombe. Others are Yobe, Borno, Adamawa, Kebbi and Katsina.
Director, Drought and Desertification in the ministry, Nkem Ononiwu, while briefing members of the House of Representatives Committee on Environment (including the Chairman, Duro Faseyi) on the GGW explained that FramanAgridev had already expressed interest to invest about N300 billion in the project.
Under the arrangement, 1,000 units of houses are to be built in each of the 11 states where the project will be executed while 3.2 million jobs will also be created.
He said: "Nigeria has embraced this project, which many people and interest groups have identified as a major one, one that will give Nigeria food security, create employment for between 2.5 and 3.2 million and help to remove poverty in the arid lands of Nigeria as well as recreate the ecosystem of the whole place. It will check the southward movement of the Sahara so that there will be no more desert encroachment into the Nigerian hinterland.
"We are going to give you the full cost when the baseline studies are completed because we are still at the conceptual stages, but it is a project that will cost trillions of naira and that is why we do not put the burden on Nigeria, we want to put it on investors and different funding structures including PPP, BOT or humanitarian."
According to him, key objectives of the GGW include conservation and recovery of existing vegetation, introduction of new plantations, promotion of modern bio-energy in place of the unsustainable biomass use and improved range and water resources management.
A continental effort coordinated by Senegal in relation to the commission of the African Union, the GGW was launched by the sahelo-saharan countries in Africa to prevent the spread of desertification.
Senegalese President, Maitre Abdoulaye Wade, said on the project last year in Rome during Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) conference: "This project entails planting trees over a distance of 7,000 km from Dakar to Djibouti to constitute a five kilometres wide green strip across the desert to stop any further progress of desertification process. With the regeneration of biodiversity, we plan to give our planet a new 'green lung' and contribute thus to the fight against climatic changes. We have already identified the course of the GGW and selected the tree species to be planted according to climatic zones, each country crossed by the Great Wall being responsible for its edification within its borders.
"Alongside the GGW we are planning to build water capture basins. The process consists in collecting rain water during the rainy season at the lowest point of each village by compacting the ground as a basin. Every year during the rainy season we lose important quantities of water by evaporation, infiltration underground or running off to the ocean. With water capture basins these resources are valorised to enable farmers in rural areas to grow food all year long, develop fish farming and satisfy their nutritional needs and even export market garden produce."
While noting that the investment for a water retention basin stood at around $140,000 he added: "We have built more than 200 in Senegal and the life of beneficiary populations has improved qualitatively."
Plan for the proposed $3 million, two-year initial phase of the project, which involves a belt of trees 7,000 kilometres long and 15 kilometres wide, was formally adopted last June during the Community of Sahel-Saharan States (Cen-Sad) summit on rural development and food security in Cotonou, Benin Republic.
Essentially, the Green Wall involves two planting projects on the east and west sides of Africa.
The Inter-State Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel region (CILSS) has been working with scientific consultants and representatives from the arid countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal. Pilot planting projects were scheduled for launch in September 2008.
Another planting programme, including Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan, is ongoing under the auspices of six states in the Horn of Africa, linked through the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).
According to Mariam Aladji Boni Diallo, the Benin-based President of the Cen-Sad Summit Organising Committee, the Green Wall should consist of more than just trees.
"Reforestation, restoration of natural resources and the eventual development of fishing and livestock breeding were priorities for the project," said Diallo.
North African countries have been promoting the idea of a Green Belt since 2005.
The GGW has been scaled down to reinforce and then expand on existing efforts, and some observers believe that it would not be a continent-wide wall of trees, despite its name.
The GGW would involve several stretches of trees from Mauritania in the west to Djibouti in the east to protect the semi-arid savannah region of the Sahel and its agricultural land from desertification.
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