NGO To Mobilize 560,000 Youths For Tree Planting In Ogoni

Eco-Citizen Ogoni Initiative (ECOI), a non-governmental organization, has launched an Eco Volunteer Portal to register 560,000 youth volunteers for the takeoff of the planting of 560 million mangrove trees in the deforested Ogoniland, Rivers State.
Speaking at the launch of the portal, www.ecocitizenogoni.org, in Port Harcourt to mark the International Youth Day, 2025, the Coordinator of ECOI in Ogoni, Pastor Nature Dumale said the youths would be recruited as part of the Global Green Marshalls. He said the project would be completed in 2035.
“The groundbreaking digital platform, the Eco-Volunteers Portal, is designed to mobilise and equip 560,000 Ogoni youth as Global Green Goal Marshalls.
“Aligned with this year’s global theme, ‘Local Youth Action for the SDGs and Beyond,’ the platform is a powerful symbol of youth-led transformation at the grassroots, showcasing how Ogoni youth are not only responding to the climate crisis, but re-imagining development through community-based action, digital innovation, and regenerative impact.”
Dumale explained that the portal represented a hub for green innovation, civic engagement, and youth-led systems transformation in Ogoniland and beyond.
He said the 560,000 trained Eco-Volunteers would be deployed in 56 wards in four local government areas of Ogoni and that the initiative would catalyze over 500,000 green-blue economy jobs in sectors like clean energy, regenerative agriculture, aquaculture, sustainable transport, eco-enterprise, and circular economy innovation.
He noted that the portal would deliver climate-smart, community-led development aligned with SDGs 6, 7, 8, 13, 14, and 15.
“Through real-time dashboards, peer-led learning labs, fellowship placements, mission tracking, and a youth-centered opportunity marketplace, the platform positions Ogoni’s young people as designers and defenders of a just, regenerative future,” he said.
Dumale added: “This portal affirms the role of Ogoni youth not just as volunteers, but as visionaries. They are not waiting for opportunity to arrive, they are building it, one mangrove, one enterprise, one mission at a time.”
Senator Ireti Heebah Kingibe, Deputy Chairperson of the Senate Committee on Ecology and Climate Change, said, “We must move from remediation to regeneration and that starts with empowering young people at the frontline,”
“This initiative represents a critical shift from extractive development to ecological stewardship. It is not just Ogoni’s future at stake it is Nigeria’s promise to its youth and its ecosystems.”
Also speaking, Mr. Victor Wilkinson Agih, Global Director of the ECO2RUPPERS Africa Initiative, said, “This is more than a portal. It is a platform for inter-generational equity and distributed leadership.
“From the restoration of degraded ecosystems to the reinvention of livelihoods, this model shows what is possible when youth are not just included, but trusted, trained, and resourced to lead.”