Revitalizing NAGGW: DG Abubakar’s Tour to Address Challenges and Improve Services
By Abdullahi Jalaluddin
The newly appointed Director General/CEO, National Agency for the Great Green Wall, NAGGW, Saleh Abubakar has swung into action in a bid to ensure improvement of services of the agency.
NAGGW is a Nigerian federal agency under the Federal Ministry of Environment, established to address land degradation and desertification, boost food security and support communities to adapt to climate change in the 11 Nigerian frontline states of Sokoto, Kebbi, Kastina, Zamfara, Kano, Jigawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Yobe, Borno, and Adamawa.
Abubakar, who was appointed on July 13, 2024 by President Bola Tinubu, was in Kano on Thursday to meet with stakeholders in order to fine-tune modalities for better service delivery in the area of land degradation and desertification, boost food security and support communities to adapt to climate change.
The DG/CEO first met with University Consultancy Service community from the 11 frontline states to brainstorm in order to address challenges they face in order to address them for better service delivery.
Speaking in an interview with newsmen after the meeting, Abubakar reaffirmed the NAGGW’s commitment towards collaborating with the university of consultancy services to enhance the quality of work within the scope of the responsibilities of the agency.
“We are partnering with University Consultancy Services to improve our work and have more collaboration.
“We have just had a meeting with them now and we will improve our work. We have built bridges. We realised that there were things done in the past. They were done over and over but the results are negative.
“We are going back to the drawing board. With the advices we received from the university consults gathered here, we are going to do it differently,” he said
In his remarks earlier on behalf of the university consults, Professor Adamu Umaru Zubama from the University of Maiduguri, described the engagement as fruitful and noted that vital issues were brainstormed.
According to him, they consultants were facing challenges in so many areas of their work but expressed optimism that the new DG/CEO would address the hitches for overall success of the agency.
Similarly, Abubakar proceeded to meet with field officers from the 11 frontline states at the agency’s headquarters in Kano.
Speaking at the maiden meeting, the DG/CEO said he deemed it fit to engage with stakeholders, including the field officers to brainstorm and bring out successs and challenges in order to improve the services of the agency.
“I welcome you to the maiden meeting since my appointment as the DG. I am happy to meet you, the battle commenders, to interact in order to find the way out to resolve challenges.
“I have been going round to departments and found out there are a lot of challenges. That is why I decided to consult this tour to fix those challenges.
“We want to do things differently. I want us to agree on a common goal for the success of this agency.
“So, i implore you to open up your challenges, don’t hide anything because we are here to chart a new course for the agency. I am open and straight forward and ready to take action.
“We are going to take notes of our discussion here and when we go back to Abuja, we will sit down and analyze the notes and start action,” he said.
The field officers identified lack of synergy between departments and field offices as the major challenges .
They also highlighted that monitoring and inspection have not been spelled out in the agency, in addition to lack of logistics.
The DG/CEO after hearing the challenges, vowed to address them and I prove on the success achieved so far.
