Mr John Auta, the Acting Director, Forestry Department, Federal Ministry of Environment, made this known in an interview in Abuja.
He said to achieve this; all the necessary machinery had been set in motion, adding that the outcome of the just concluded forestry workshop was to check illegal logging of woods in some states.
The workshop was tagged ``Survey and Study on Timber: Flows to identify the extent of illegal logging in Nigeria”.
Auta further stressed that the illegal importation and exportation of timbers in and out of the country had become a problem for the country in the international market.
He added that another problem was that the country did not even know the types of woods available in Nigeria, making it easy for people to import and export wood anyhow.
According to him, timber products from countries that have not signed the ``Voluntary Partnership Agreement’’ laid down by EU were considered ``illegally sourced products’’.
He said if the country failed to sign the agreement by March 2013, its timber products would be shut out of the European markets.
It was earlier reported that any country that didn’t sign the Voluntary Partnership Agreement as laid down by the EU by March 2013 would not have their wood in EU markets.
Nigeria is one of the countries yet to sign the agreement, which expert said, could have grave consequences on its forest products in the international timber market.
Auta said that part of the plans was to discuss and resolve all issues that would position Nigeria to key into the important EU agreement and also develop a draft on it.
He, however, said that the EU had sponsored a consultant, Mr Peter Lowes, who visited Nigeria and went round nine states to see the extent of illegal logging.
Auta explained that the main objective of the consultation was to assist Nigeria to fill the gaps in the draft report through further interaction with various stakeholders.
He was optimistic that the draft would be developed and submitted to EU as soon as possible.
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