Omiete Blessing
As part of efforts to mitigate climate change and reduce hunger among school children, a non governmental organisation (NGO), Lokiaka Community Development Centre, has established a fruit trees garden at Community Secondary School, Wiiyakara in Khana local government area of Rivers State.
The Nigerian Xpress observed that over 100 fruit trees were planted in the school premises.
The NGO also launched a Schools Environment and Health Club and carried out sensitisation on the importance of tree planting, tagged: “Cut one tree, plant three trees” in Wiiyakara community.
During the exercise, the students drawn from Kono and Wiiyakara Community Secondary Schools were taught how to plant and nurture the trees so that they can survive.
The fruit trees include species of African mango (ogbono), date, guava, avocado pear, among others carefully nurtured by the centre.
Addressing the school children during the planting exercise, at the CSS Wiiyakara, yesterday, Executive Director of Lokiaka Development Centre, Martha Agbani stated that apart from the date, other fruits used to be in Ogoniland but have gone extinct because of years of pollution and climate change impacts.
She said the organisation will be planting a minimum of one hundred fruits trees in the community and in the school.
Agbani said: “We are here today to establish a fruit garden and Environment and Health club in your school. We are doing this as an organization as part of our contribution to mitigating climate change. We are also doing this to support you as children so that in the nearest future you will have fruits to eat when you are here and you will not be too hungry.
We chose those in JSS1 and SSS1 so that by the next two or three years of your stay in this School and when you come to school and you are hungry you should have what to eat.
We are bringing in very special varieties of plants. We are bringing in what we normally call ‘ogbono’, we will also be planting guava for you, avocado pear, and date. Date is abit alien to the Ogoni environment but it’s a very nutritional fruit. These days we are hearing issues about eye and sugar diabetes.”
She emphasised that it is when people are sure of what they breath into their nostrils from the environment, in the food they eat that we can say we have a sustainable environment.
Agbani also pointed out that the project is part of a linking and learning initiative by Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action (GAGGA), across Africa being currently implemented in Uganda and Nigeria.
She said research carried out revealed massive tree cutting in the Niger Delta region, which necessitated the need to carry out a campaign to restore lost forests.
“This is a combination of our linking and learning initiative that we’ve been carrying out across Africa. We have the Ugandan Team and we in Nigeria carrying out a learning exchange and of course what we have been looking out are issues that have to do with environmental justice and we’ve done a survey before now, after which we carried out linking and learning for Ugandan government which is an emerging oil and gas economy and part of what we gathered from the research we carried out was that there are lots of tree cutting in the Niger Delta area. And that of Uganda the EACOP project that they want to have will affect both water, forests and land.
“So we have to carry out the campaign here because we know that there is over harvesting of trees in the Niger Delta area. And we are looking at Ogoni environment that has high level of petroleum hydrocarbons. So we need trees to sequester these carbons out of the environment.”
A JSS3 students of the school in Kono, Rejoice Victor who spoke with journalists, expressed joy at partaking in planting the garden.
She said: “I am so happy because trees used to bring breeze and some times when the sun is very hot some of us will go under tree and stay and sometimes when we go to the hospital, doctor will advise us to eat fruit and that is why I like it when they are planting fruits”, Rejoice added.
