President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the purchase of a helicopter for the National Park Service to enable the parks to step up their surveillance activities in protecting the Flora and Fauna of Nigeria.
Conservator-General of the National Parks Service (NPS), Dr Ibrahim Goni, said this on Monday at a press conference on “World Ranger Day, 2022 and public lecture.
He said the procurement has reached an advanced stage and the helicopter would soon be in the pool of surveillance assets of the service for the protection of the parks.
His words: “Mr President has approved the acquisition of a helicopter for the National Park Service in the 2022 budget. The funds have been released. It is just that African Nature Initiative (ANI) came out faster than us else we would have been ahead of them.”
Tribune Online can report that the 2022 budget as approved by the national assembly earmarked about N40m for the procurement of a helicopter, it reads “ERGP 19170999 procurement of surveillance equipment (helicopter) new N418,700,037.”
Goni also stated that the service was exploring avenues to improve the protection of the parks by working on a memorandum of understanding with the MTN mobile service provider to communicate across distances in the parks.
According to him: “apart from the helicopter, there are other technologies we use in monitoring our parks. We are relating with service providers, MTN Glo, Airtel and the rest of them wherever they are, and wherever the parks are. That will save us the problem of having to acquire our other communication equipment if we are able to sign the collaboration with them.
“It means that our services will cover areas of our parks. It will ease the demand for gadgets and we just buy handsets for our rangers, and wherever they are, they will be able to communicate easily. So we are working with the service provider, particularly MTN, this we have started and we have gone a little bit far,” Goni stated.
ALSO READ FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
- ‘39.6 percent of unmarried university students use sexual performance-enhancing drugs’
- Tips on building a happy and healthy relationship
- Safety precautions to observe at the airport
- Safety tips to observe when boarding a ride from a ride-hailing app
- Secure your social media accounts from hackers with these tips
- Things to look out for before starting a business
surveillance helicopter for National Park Service… surveillance helicopter for National Park Service…
and then