Indiscriminate felling of trees for charcoal production has continued to thrive in some states in the North-Central in spite of government’s campaigns against the practice.
“This is what we do to feed our families. Some of us try to plant after felling each tree to enable future generations to also use them. A consumer, Dorcas Terna said that she used to buy a bag of charcoal for N1, 800 and sometimes even N2,000. Also, in Nasrawa State, a Lafia-based charcoal dealer, Hannah Emeka, said she enjoyed high patronage from her customers, saying that the business had sustained her and family.
The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, Abdullahi Ciroma, said the partnership became necessary to checkmate indiscriminate felling of trees to produce charcoal in the state. The permanent secretary, then, disclosed that the State Government planned to plant one million trees to replace the trees that were felled by loggers in some of the forest reserves in the state.
Mrs Waride said she had been in the business for the past 50 years and that the commodity was usually sourced from trees that were cut and burnt in the forest. One of them, Jeremiah Atoshi, said he was using charcoal because it was more accessible than any other source of cooking energy.