Chuks Oyema-Aziken
Conservator-General, National Park Service, NPS, Dr. Ibrahim Goni, has vowed to intensify cooperation with relevant stakeholders towards improving fortunes of the Parks across the country.
The CG stated this when the Environmental Media Correspondent Association of Nigeria, EMCAN, paid him a courtesy visit in his office in Abuja, the nation’s capital.
He said the NPS, would also collaborate with the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control in Nigeria, NAFDAC, Pharmaceutical institutes and other organisation to strengthen the country’s National park.
“We have a lot of plants and animals resources lying down in the Parks we have to research into them to be able to relate with these organisation to help used the findings of these research to moved this country forward, so research is one thing we are going to be focusing on in these five years,” Dr Goni explained.
He said he would also engage the National Assembly to increase the funding of the National Park Service, as it is one basic step to improved the service, as this would help the service to achieved more.
“In other to keep our National Parks secure we are boosting our security sector by proposing the acquisition of ICT equipment, by going digital instead of using men for surveillance this time we intend to use ICT, to be able to use and get our intelligence, to track invaders into our National Parks, this is the reason in our 2022 budget we have provision for the acquisition of our own helicopter,” he explained.
Dr. Goni also reiterated that the Service would continue to work with other sister agency like the Nigerian Custom Service, Nigerian Police force to also share more intelligence to safeguard the Nation’s Parks.
He noted that the Service would also improve its revenue through Public Private Partnership to strengthen the country’s National Parks.
“National Parks in Kenya, Tanzanian and South Africa do not depend on government funding, most of us have been sent to under study these National Parks we have gather enough knowledge from these visit, therefore we want to explore on this area to see how we can improve on our revenue through Public Private Partnership, also the Office of the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo under the Bureau of Public Enterprises had listed 3 National Parks for partial commerailsation we would key into these programme to bring in more entrepreneurs to develop and provide infrastructures to the Park like, Road, Hotels, logistics to help gain more funds to move the Parks forward,” Dr Goni added.
The Assistant Conservator General, National Parks Service, Dr. Agboola Okeyoyin while speaking on the ten new National Parks newly acquired by the government, said the NPS has inaugurated a Committee on the ten National Parks.
“For the ten new national Parks we have inaugurated Committees for Osun, Nasarawa, for Katsina, we paid a courtesy call to the governor of Katsina, and he promised to invite the NPS soon for the constitution of the State inauguration Committee.” Dr. Okeyoyin explained.
He said the essence of Committee was to have smooth transition to help move the game or foreign reserve into National Parks.
According to him, “the Committees would be made up of all the regular stakeholders from the State, the women group, youth, traditional institution, while awaiting Bayelsa and Jigawa State government for the inauguration of their Committee.”
He noted that NPS was putting measures in place to ensure that before the third quarter of 2022 some of these issues would be addressed, while stressing that the NPS was having challenges for easy proclamation of these lands.
The National Park Service, NPS, also acquired ten brand new Hilux Pickup trucks and thirty motorcycles to be distributed to ten new National Parks in the country.
Earlier, EMCAN Chairman, Chuks Oyema congratulated the CG on his reappointment. He urged the CG to remain committed to the upliftment of the National Parks Service.
The interactive session with the Conservator General of the National Park Service, Dr Ibrahim Goni and the Environmental Media Correspondent Association, of Nigeria EMCAN, was aimed to open more opportunity for further engagements between the NPS and EMCAN.
