 Let me on behalf of the government and people of Nigeria once again welcome you to the eighth ordinary session of the Council of Ministers of the Great Green Wall of member countries. I'd like to express the profound gratitude of Nigeria to the Council of Ministers of the Great Green Wall Meeting, which at its seventh session held in Nwakshot, Mauritania, designated Nigeria to host the eighth ordinary session. And as if the privilege of hosting the eighth session of the Council of Ministers was not enough, a space at its margin has been created for a flag of a tree planting exercise to commemorate the event. Also, let me congratulate the executive secretary, Dr. Brimeside, on his election and commend him and his team at the secretariat for all their hard work and dedication. Nigeria believes that protecting our planet, its biodiversity and climate, are essential to our collective survival. The impact of climate change is upon us, all over the continent, drought and desertification, increasing conflicts over pasture and water, food insecurity, loss of livelihoods, and youth migration, among others, characterize the environment. We're especially facing a receding lychard, which means that fishing, dry seizing, farming, and all other associated value chain benefits are lost or greatly reduced. In these circumstances, we must build climate resilient economies that effectively align with the SDGs and that have great potentials for unlocking the full opportunities in different sectors of our economies, while protecting the resources for present and future generations. To tackle these and other associated challenges, Nigeria recently signed the Nigeria Agroclimatic Resilience in Semi-Arid Landscapes project with the World Bank. The project will increase the implementation of sustainable landscape management practices in northern Nigeria and strengthen the country's long-term enabling environment for integrated climate resilient landscape management. It's a six-year program worth $700 million, and it's a strategic project that prioritizes actions within four components. The first is dry land management, the second community climate resilience, then there's institutional strengthening and project management and contingency emergency response. Your excellencies, we must take every opportunity, and especially at meetings like this, to remind ourselves as African leaders and our development friends of what the Great Green Wall project is and what it is not. While the original vision was to create a wall of trees against desertification in the Sahel, in the Horn and across North Africa, the Great Green Wall today has a more ambitious reach. It is now a variety of sustainable land-use practices designed to combat climate change and desertification and to address food insecurity and poverty, extreme poverty. As important to emphasize, that for Africa, mitigation and adaptation methods for climate change must be mindful of the fact that Africa is confronted with twin challenges. The ravages of climate change, but perhaps more importantly, the existential problem of extreme poverty. Both, not one, must be addressed. This is why Nigeria's plans to attain net zero by 2060 and our energy transition plan also focus on how to creatively transit to net zero emissions and at the same time increase access to power and high agricultural and industrial output. With respect to forests, the point needs to be made clearly and perhaps more clearly. Africa's rainforests absorb no less than about 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide yearly. This is more than the Amazon or any other region's rainforests. So financing is needed to help preserve these vital carbon sinks. Because without viable alternative energy sources, much of the local population still depends on burning firewood for cooking and heating. So there's a need to provide sustainable energy alternatives and to compensate regional governments who in the interest of maintaining these carbon sinks for all of us have to forego deforestation for agriculture or industrialization. The Desennial Priority Investment Plan, DPIP 2021-2030, is an important pillar of the overall Great Green War project. The plan as you know is hinged on sustainable land management actions that emphasize ecosystem restoration, recovery and conservation of land and biodiversity social economic development activities, adaptation and resilience to climate change. The commitment of every nation will be important in meeting the deadline of the decade on ecosystem restoration agenda 2021-2030. I must commend the current initiatives by the International Technical and Financial Partners Institutions for pledging financial resources to support the implementation of the Great Green War initiative. The early disbursement of the funds or the pledged funds without stringent conditionalities would indeed see the transformation of our degraded ecosystems. I have in my capacity as President of the Conference of Heads of States and Governments of Member States, Director of the Honorable Minister of Finance of Nigeria to lead the initiative to access the pledged funds by our partners under the Great Green Wall Accelerator. The minister will take appropriate steps in line with the understandings we had at the Abidjan side meetings, which was held on May 9, 2022. Finally, on behalf of the Federal Government of Nigeria, in fulfilment of Nigeria's pledge to support the PAGGW, I've also directed the Federal Ministry of Environment to coordinate the release of some vehicles for the use of the Pan-African Agency of the Great Green War, said the Secretariat and Allied Agencies. Having also fulfilled the payment of our outstanding contribution of about 654,291 US dollars, I'm also glad to pledge the sum of 550,000 US dollars only as our contribution to the building of the Great Green Wall, to the building of the Great Green Wall Secretariat. I call on other member countries to follow suit by contributing towards the building of a befitting office for the PAGGW. Before I conclude, I'd like to pay special tribute to His Excellency, the former President of the Republic of Nigeria, Mohamed Uisufu, who has continued to work hard championing financial resource mobilisation for the implementation process of the Great Green War for Sahara and Sahel initiative. In a few minutes, I will be flagging of the 2022 tree planting campaign, and I hope that the state's governments will replicate the same across their various states, so that we can meet our pledge of planting 25 million trees in the next two years. It is now my very special pleasure and privilege to declare open the eighth ordinary session of the Council of Ministers of the PAGGW. Thank you very much.