President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday in Glasgow, Scotland, said Africa’s ambition of restoring over 100million hectares of degraded landscape for productive agriculture was achievable.
He said this at the Climate Change Summit, COP 26 side event on the Great Green Wall (GGW), co-hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, the Prince of Wales, and the Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani.
Buhari said it was noteworthy that the meeting was tailored towards ameliorating the problems of land degradation, desertification, depletion of the forest ecosystems and biodiversity in Africa.
He said Nigeria would soon be assuming the leadership of Conference of Heads of State and Government of the Pan African Agency of the Great Green Wall.
“Nigeria pledges her unalloyed commitment to expanding the achievements of the GGW programme in Africa from the enviable status attained under the leadership of His Excellency, Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, President of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania.
Buhari, in a statement issued by his media aide, Garba Shehu, said one of the major outcomes of the fourth edition of the One Planet Summit on Biodiversity, organized by the French Government in Paris, France on 11th January 2021, was the pledge of $19.6 billion by the coalition of international communities to upscale the implementation of the Great Green Wall Initiative in Africa.
On the margins of COP26, Buhari accompanied by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Environment (State), Petroleum (State), Power (State), the Nigerian High Commissioner to the UK, Sarafa Tunji Isola and the Group Managing Director, NNPC, Mele Kyari, toured the Nigerian Pavilion.
At the Pavilion, he held a bilateral meeting with the Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, Ibrahim Thiaw.
Nigeria is part of the 193 countries that have ratified the UN Convention to combat desertification.
