The Hon. Minister of state for Environment, Ibrahim Usman Jibril has described the success rate of Nigeria Erosion and Watershed Management Project as overwhelming. The Minister applauded the holistic watershed approach of the project, which he said further endeared NEWMAP to the people in the various communities where the project has intervened.

The Minister, who spoke to the Communication team prior his journey to Washington in March 2017, reiterated that “NEWMAP came as a new concept, something that can be replicated elsewhere and so far the success rate is overwhelming. The project did a Mid Term Review (MTR) last year and in some states we recorded up to 80% success. You could also judge the success of the project with the fact that additional 12 states of Akwa Ibom, Delta, Gombe, Borno, Plateau, Oyo, Sokoto, Niger, Nasarawa, Kano, Kogi an Katsina have joined the project making a total of 19 states and more states are still indicating interests.

“I have been to 9th Mile intervention site in Enugu where over 800meters of eroded land has been restored with complementary biological remediation activities. There is high degree of success in NEWMAP intervention and the ministry of environment is making plans to present papers of what we have done in NEWMAP in the past 4 years at the upcoming World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty coming up in Washington DC in the week of 20th March, 2017” he noted.