The Director- General of Nigeria Conservative Foundation (NCF), Mr Joseph Onoja, has advised Nigerians to choose tree planting over lavish birthday and anniversary parties.
Onoja made the call on Friday in Abuja at the maiden edition of the Abuja Garden Festival against the backdrop of severe heatwaves being currently experienced in parts of the country.
He said that being intentional about tree planting by deliberately channeling resources to it will go a long way to reducing the effects of climate change in the country.
“We don’t call it planting of trees, we actually call it nurturing of trees because you don’t just put a plant on the ground and think that it will just grow, it has to be nurtured for two or three years so that it will be able to grow and it will be able to perform the role that it is supposed to play in the environment.
” We try to encourage people so that during their anniversaries, during birthdays, instead of just throwing parties, we should organise tree planting events so that we plant trees that will be able to play the role we are supposed to play, to create more resilience especially in the face of climate change that we have ravaging us.”
For his part, Sen. Ede Dafinone, in a keynote address, said that the Federal Capital Territory has taken some steps to revamp green areas in the city describing it as a right step in the right direction.
“The existing trees should be protected, the initiative to plant trees in schools is a laudable initiative.
“The green areas must remain green areas, resident associations, schools, faith based organisations should be encouraged regarding tree planting.
“Everyone deserves access to clean green space in the FCT.
“Planting a tree is a bold step to protect our future and Abuja should lead by example,”he said.
Also speaking, the facilitators of the event, Mrs Eyamba Nzekwu, a Chartered Accountant and Mrs Nana Gbolahan, said the need to protect the environment motivated them to organise the event.
Nzekwu said Abuja is still being developed as a city with a lot of ongoing constructions nothing that trees were being cut down without replacements.
“The onus is on us as residents to improve our well-being by contributing to our environment to start planting trees.
“We are here today to encourage people to plant a tree so that we can reduce the direct contact with the sun.
“If you have a tree, the tree has a lot of benefits, it provides shade from the elements.
“If you have trees around your house and there is severe windstorm, the trees act as a wind breaker to break those winds from getting into your premises to destroy your roofs or your property.
“Some trees are even medicinal.”
Mrs Gbolahan, said that if people continued to cut down trees, there could be dire consequences.
“Erosion, desertification, excessive heat even some of our plant life will die because not all plants want to be in the full sun anyway and as human beings, how long can you stay outside under the sun on a normal day. We are all from Nigeria so obviously we are tropical.
“Ordinary we know that we work in the sun but the sun of 10 years ago and the sun of today is very very different so imagine if you don’t have any trees at all what that will do to us. So even health could be affected and impacted seriously if we had no trees.”
According to her, the whole idea is to get ourselves involved in what government is doing because we cannot leave everything to government.
” With this initiative, we are supporting the government and we expect that the government will support us too because we are doing this for everyone not just for us ourselves alone.”
The News Agency of Nigeria, NAN) reports that the event was attended by garden owners as well as natural flowers and other natural foods sellers.
NAN also reports that seedlings were given to people in attendance to plant, tend and report progress of the plants at the next festival.(NAN) (www.nannews.ng)
WS