Cross River 2019 Green Carnival: Residents Need To Get Involved By Planting Trees – Ayade

EMMANUEL ULAYI

All is now set for the smooth take off of the Cross River State 2019 Green Carnival scheduled for Tuesday, 30th July, 2019, which has been declared as Public Holiday in the State, with muster point from the Calabar Zoo Garden which symbolizes the essence of the event.

To this end, Governor Ben Ayade has called on all Cross Riverians to get involved in the 2019 Green Carnival, where one million trees will be planted. The Governor insisted that tree planting is healthy for our lives and environment. The Governor, Prof Ayade, disclosed this through the chairman of the Green Carnival Organising Committee and immediate past Commissioner, Climate Change & Forestry.

In an interview with the Immediate past Commissioner of Climate Change and Forestry and Chairman of the Organizing Committee of the event, Dr. Alice Ekwu, encouraged all residents in Calabar and in all the 18 local Government areas of the State to come out enmasse and participate in the tree planting exercise along designated streets as the programme will hold Simultaneously across the State.

She said in Calabar, all Ministries, Departments and Agencies( MDAs) will converge at Zoo Garden for a road walk. The procession will pass through Mary Slessor to Marian, Rabanna, through IBB in a competition mood and terminate at the U.J Esuene Stadium with two adjudication points at Rabanna and the main one at the stadium with His Excellency Governor Ben Ayade as one of the Judges while the winning MDA will cart home five million Naira ( N5m) before they are dispersed to various locations and designated streets for the planting of trees.

She added, “The Steam and Verve of the publicity behind the 2019 Cross River State Green Carnival is because the digital Governor, His Excellency, Senator Prof. Ben Ayade, is personally interested; it is actually his brain child. Green Carnival was put in place by Governor Ayade on assumption of duty in 2015. He not only went ahead to create the ministry of Climate Change in tandem with global trends, he went a step further to bring into place the programme the Green Carnival. Green Carnival is about tree planting and taking advantage of the crowd, the festivity around a carnival to still pass the message of tree planting and this event now, we are taking advantage of the natural wet season we are endowed with”.

Dr. Ekwu stressed that trees are the veritable tools for mitigating climate change, reducing emissions in the atmosphere, reduce atmospheric temperature which causes global warming and climate change and that is why Green Carnival is very important.

The former Commissioner gave more reasons for hosting the event, “Why are we doing it in Cross River State, His Excellency, the digital Governor of the State, who is proactive in everything he does, he dreams actively and effectively to harnessing the resources available at his disposal to use to his best advantage which is the forest. Cross River State has 58 percent of the forest in the whole of Nigeria, which means we are in the best stead to deal with global warming and climate change so he created this program to address this and create awareness for people to plant trees.”

In conclusion, Dr Ekwu reiterated that the trees planted will help support in the replacement of whatever trees that could be lost in the process of executing one of Governor Ayade’s Signature projects, the Super Highway. She said this is part of the requirements for the super highway project and appealed to all indigenes and none indigenes to support by participating in the Green Carnival and plant trees.