NCF Director-General, Muhtari Aminu-Kano
The Nigerian Conservative Foundation (NCF) is training 50 park rangers on capacity building in the Okomu National Park as part of efforts to improve its security.
NCF Director-General, Muhtari Aminu-Kano, addressing the rangers at the two-day training in Udo, Edo, said that the foundation secured 99,000 Euros from BIOPAMA, a European-based NGO, to develop nature conservation activities of the park.
“The project itself is about 99,000 Euros that we were able to secure from BIOPAMA.
“We are going to get some protection equipment, some motorcycles; we are going to refurbish a four by four vehicle to enhance the protection of the park.
“We are also going to train community members because we realised that every stakeholder must be taken on board.
“We are going to also build capacity of some support communities to be able to protect the parks to ensure the capacity of park protection guards are being enhanced,’’ he said.
Aminu-Kano said that the foundation had been managing the park before it was handed over to the National Park Service.
“We will continue to provide the support we can to the national park especially to Okomu National Park,’’ he said.
Earlier, the Conservator of the park, Tesleem Kareem said that although the Okomu Park “is the smallest in Nigeria national parks with 24.22 square km, it is the richest in terms of biodiversity.’’
Kareem said that the training of the rangers and equipment donated would help in updating, conserving and managing the biodiversity resources of the park.
“We have about three rangers and five other sectional stations doted around 24.22 square km of Okomu national park.
“We are going to ensure we distribute this equipment to every section and every ranger of the park.
“I will ensure that I monitor them to the core so that the objectives will not be defeated,” he said.
The conservator thanked the foundation for the equipment and assured that they would be put to judicious use. (NAN)
