Anambra State Commissioner for Environment Engr. Felix Odimegwu, has intensified efforts to checkmate the rapid environmental crisis witnessed across the state in form of erosion and watershed. Speaking in a brief exclusive conversation with The West African Pilot News during a tree planting exercise around specified locations within the capital city Awka on Thursday, Engr. Felix Odimegwu said that Anambra State Ministry of Environment is guided by Governor Soludo’s mandate that the state must plant at least a million trees every year. “So far”, according to the Commissioner, “the Ministry has been able to plant no fewer than seven hundred thousand trees across the state”.
Throughout Anambra State, erosion menace has been a major environmental hazard to the extent that there is hardly any local government without a notable erosion site. Tree planting is one of the major ways to control erosion. But aside erosion control, the Commissioner also remarked that tree planting is part of the Ministry’s way of checkmating other adverse effects of climate change. “It’s one of the ways we are using to mitigate the adverse impact of climate change”, Odimegwu said.
Some of the trees planted so far around the state include; African Tulip, Umbrella Tree, Step Tree, Orchard, as well as some economic trees which serve multiple purposes. During the tree planting in Awka metropolis on Thursday, Engr. Felix Odimegwu and his team covered Ekwueme Square axis and Anambra State House of Assembly where economic trees like orange and guava were planted.
Speaking on the source of the trees being planted, the Commissioner said that many of them had been donated by good spirited Anambra men and women. For instance, Morizbo Forestry and Green Concepts, according to Engr. Felix, had donated seedlings and trees to the Ministry. Also, Urban Ewenia Forestry in Ibadan, according to him, donated not less than fifty thousand baobab tree to the Ministry of Environment.
Recently, Anambra State Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture have collaborated and distributed thousands of special bred coconut and palm trees which are expected to change the economic fortunes of beneficiaries selected from the lower rungs of the economic ladder, in the shortest possible time.
He is a Technical Assistant to Governor Willie Obiano’s Special Adviser on Legislative Matters, whoonce was a Special Adviser to a former Deputy Speaker of Anambra State House of Assembly. Ebuka is a second class upper division graduate of Political Science from University of Calabar, Calabar Nigeria and holds a Masters Degree in Political Science with specialization in Government and Development Studies, from Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka Nigeria
