NEWSROYALE ‘How Tikau Emirate nurtured 30,000 plantations to check desertification’
His Royal Highness, Alhaji Muhammad Abubakar Ibn Grema, is the First Class Emir of Tikau and Chancellor of Yobe State University, Damaturu, Yobe State. He speaks about his efforts in controlling desertification, drugs abuse and other societal issues in hi
From Hamisu Kabir Matazu, Damaturu
It amazes a first-timer to see plantations all over Tikau Emirate considering that the district is a dessert prone area, what is the secret?
It’s one of the best legacies we embarked upon to fight desertification in our area. Since the day I was turbaned, we discovered that we are among the areas being affected by desertification and deforestation was going on. We quickly launched a local afforestation programme that provided all these plantations.
But, what inspired you to think in that direction?
If I take you back to the 70s, it’s from the villages that we get firewood for domestic use but, now the story has changed. One has to go to the urban centre to buy firewood and this was caused by the unnecessary felling down of trees by the people.
We noticed with great concern that the attitude has greatly affected our well-being. People were blindly clearing the trees without thinking of the future and if care is not taken there would be a time when you can hardly access tree even for medicinal use. As a result of that, we decided to embark on a fiveyear tree planting programme to restore our destroyed vegetation.
In this respect, we established nurseries for each of the five districts to take responsibility of raising the plantations through the supervision of the village and the district heads. We served each district with 200, 000 polythene bags to raise the seedlings which they nursed to maturity and distributed them to people for free. Also, we organize a competition to have the best producing district and a trophy awarded to winners of the tree planting programme we observe yearly. This was aimed at motivating them to improve more.
We encouraged them to plant not less than 3000 seedlings in the established woodlots in each of the 15 centres. At the end of the exercise, we realized that we have not less than 30,000 plantations within the community. We estimated to have distributed not less than 1.4m seedlings to the communities. We have also introduced planting economic trees such as Guava, Mango and Cashew among others.
Drugs abuse has been among the top problems. What is the situation in your Kingdom?
To be candid drug addiction has become one of the serious issues of concern and a major problem within the community.
It is very unfortunate, and we don’t know how it became so rampant among the people. It has gone to the extent now that if you go to the local markets in the rural areas you find people selling it openly without any fear of the law. Married women, youths, old men and women are now into drug abuse. I think only prayers will get us out of this mess.
We know the NDLEA is doing its best but they’re faced with manpower challenges. They are not many enough to cover all the places. Also, I am of the opinion that there should be quick dispensation of drugs cases before the courts. Here, we are trying to form an independent drug fighting organization. The local government chairman has been briefed. We summoned all district, village and ward heads where we directed them to form societies that will be checking the activities of drug peddlers.
Also, we informed the NDLEA officials that we want to come up with a new approach but we needed their support, so that it will enable us monitor the activities of the drug peddlers that bring the substance to sell. We felt that unless we take such bold measures that our society will remain descent and progressive.
Almajiris schools were alleged to be breeding grounds of insurgents, what are doing to protect them?
Not until the rising of Boko Haram insurgency, the idea of how do we handle these Almajiris have been started. They’re in a very pathetic situation unless we come together and agree that a new formula should be set up whereby they will be grouped in one place and take care of. A child can learn from everywhere, so with the recent emergence of Islamic Schools, I think that one can be converted into an institution whereby the general community will come together with a system from the government and reposition these Islamiyya Schools to model schools. Here, the children will be given the best kind of education, both Arabic and Western so that they grow up modestly. Most of the Islamiyya Schools are performing wonderfully if you compared with what obtained in the past.
What message do you have for politicians?
I am calling on politicians to understand that Nigeria is our country. They should ensure that they reposition the country our fore fathers contributed immensely to develop. However, some selfish politicians have distorted all these legacies and values that we have been enjoying. We appeal to them to put Nigeria first in their mind before any other thing. We urge them to be very friendly, patriotic and diplomatic.