Minister of environment, Malam Balarabe Abbas Lawal, has disclosed that the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s government is planning engagement of strong forces that will rid Nigeria’s forests of criminal elements.
He said aside the security risks they constitute, bandits, poachers, kidnappers and other criminal elements hibernating in the Nigerian forests, are threats to the country’s Great Green Wall projects, aimed at fencing the country from desert encroachment.
Lawal who stated this in Kaduna when he opened a two-day top management retreat organised by the ministry, said though there are park rangers and forest guards in place, they are not enough to tackle the bandits and other criminals, hence the need to consider engaging more forces.
The retreat with the theme; “Policy Embedment and Prioritisation of Key Action For a Renewed Hope in Environmental Management”, had in attendance the minister of state for environment, Dr. Isiaq Salako, directors in the ministry, heads of agencies and resource persons.
According to the minister, “We have a very serious issue with our forests; our forests have become hibernation grounds for bandits, poachers and kidnappers. So, the only way we can save the forests and save our communities, is to do something very drastic about it. We need to get enough force into the forests to clean them of these miscreants that have turned our forest into something else. So, we are on it. We have similar issues in oil areas and mining sites.
“So, the government with the support of the president, will come up with a very strong measure of trying to get enough forces into the forests and flush these people out, because if we don’t do that, there is no way we are going to make progress in our great green wall, where we have invested a lot of money in trying to fence Nigeria from the encroachment of the desert.
