WE'LL REPLANT MORE TREES FOR GROWTH, ENHANCE REVENUE - Ogun Commissioner

In its effort to further promote the State's forest resources for sustainable growth and development, the Commissioner for Forestry, Engr. Tunji Akinosi, said more tress would be replanted and higher revenue generated to uphold the 2021's "Budget of Recovery and Sustainability", of the State.

Akinosi said this at the 2021 Productivity Enhancement Retreat, titled, Managing Ogun Forest Resources For Sustainable Development, Growth and Revenue Enhancement, in Abeokuta.

"Despite last year's pandemic outburst and other challenges facing the forest reserves, the Ministry overshot its expected internally generated revenue, and we are here together again to redesign better measures to plant more tress and boost our revenue head beyond hundred percent this year", he said.

He said the challenges were still there, but charged all forestry officers to brace up to tackle those challenges and put up measures to generate more revenue for the growth and development of the State.

The Commissioner pointed out that as various arrests, prosecutions, fines, levies were made last year, they would be highly monitored this year with a comprehensive design to stamp out illegal logging, felling, flitches and other acts of sabotage to the State's forest resources.

In his presentation, the Chairman, Forestry Association if Nigeria, FAN, Ogun State Chapter, said forestry laws should be reviewed, training and retraining enhanced, illegal dwelling and farming must be discontinued in the forest, saying, there must be a change to chart a new way to prevent damage of the forest reserves in the State.

On his part, former Project Manager, J4 Projects, Mr. Michael Idowu, affirmed that opportunities within the forestry subsector, though numerous, should not be abused, noting that farmers who have been pardoned and given portions by the government must not go beyond their limits by illegally extending farmlands and destroying economic trees.

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