BY Ndahi Marama

BORNO State governor, Alhaji Kashim Shettima in this interview promised to tackle the security challenges besieging his administration, including  environmental changes and desert encroachment which is one of the major problems affecting the people of Borno state, especially those who lives in the Northern parts of the state on the off shores of the Lake Chad Basin, Niger Republic.  Excerpts:

Borno State is one of the frontline states that are affected by desert encroachment, so, what is your government doing to tackle this menace?

But fundamentally, we want to embark on aggressive Tree-Planting Campaign, and so far, we were able to procure about 400 kilogramme of high quality Gum Arabic Seedlings from Sudan . My Commissioner for Agriculture and Environment recently went to Sudan and procured these seedlings, and right now in our custody, we have started raising them, in addition to other ones we acquire from Kazaure.

We are doing this because of the economic importance attached to it.
If countries like Sudan can earn as much as 200,000 Dollars per Annum from the export of Gum Arabic, I see no reason why we cannot replicate such gesture in our own part of the world, after all, we are in the same part of the zone, so I can assure you that in the next cropping season, we hope to plant 20 million Gum Arabic Trees in Borno State.

Gov Shettima

And in terms of power, Jatropher is a miracle tree, Jatropher has the capacity to give us as much as 30% to 40% oil content per seed, and we intend to use Jatropher to fight desertification and deforestation, we also want to use Jatropher to fight poverty, we want to use Jatropher to create employment opportunities for our people and the bi-products from the excretion of the oil can be use for fertilizer, so in a note shell, we want to use Jatropher to generate Gas/Diesel that we are going to use  for our power-plant in New-Marte, that has the capacity to generate over 36  Mega Watts of electricity.

So I reassured you that in the next rainy season we are going to plant 20 million gum Arabic Seedlings, and for the Jatropher, we are to test-run it, in order to see the adoptability of such tree in our environment/terrain, even though, I was made to understand that Jatropher can survive in any terrain. And one of the good things in the technology and extraction of Jatropher is not cost, as it can only cost us not more than $50,000 Dollars to procure the machine.

Climate change has been on the front banner for the long time now, what is your government going to do to enlighten people, particularly those at the grass root who do not understand the devastating effects of climate change and the need for adaptation?

You are right, you know, enlightenment is very crucial towards achieving any success. Our people from time immemorial did that. I was one of the strong advocates in enlightening the people on climate change, but I found it very difficult to convince them to adapt to new technology. Most importantly, this can be viewed in the primmest of economists, that there is extreme poverty in Borno, in the North-East as well as the country at large.

Your state and the country in general is faced with security challenges, particularly now that the people from the South living in the North are going back to the South, and Northerners moving out from the South, what advice will you give to these  people?

As I said earlier, tough time cannot last forever, we should embrace one another, let us love one another irrespective of our ethnic, religious or cultural differences. As Bala Usman use to say that, Let us live beyond Rhetorics. The building blocks that make up Nigeria is not a thing that can be destroyed so easily.

Nigeria has been a country of multi-religious and different cultures, we must respect to live with one another, we have to accept one another, we have to tolerate one another, we have no other country than Nigeria, and that has been my position since  time immemorial, my advise for the good people of Borno State is to live in peace with one another. I also want to inform them that government is alive to their responsibilities in the protection of their lives and property.

So anywhere we found ourselves that is our home, we don’t have anywhere to call our home, those moving to South or North should please stay in where they are before. For example, some Northerners were born and grew in Enugu , so also some Southerners were born and grew in Borno, and I see no reason why, some group will issue a threat message for people to vacate their base.

And so, there is no basis that Southerners should vacate the North. What we are facing is security challenges, and is not something new in this part of the world, is a global phenomenon, it is only for us to find out the lasting solution to these challenges of this problem confronting us as a Nation and as a people other than to run away. Nigeria by God grace will shine great again and there is no cause for alarm, very soon peace will come back to all nooks and crannies of our great country.