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From Charity Nwakaudu, Abuja
The Minister of Environment, Mohammed Abdullahi, has stated that Climate Change is the biggest challenge faced by the present generation.
The minister made this disclosure at the opening ceremony of a technical capacity-building workshop held in Abuja, yesterday on the Climate Change Act 2021.
Abdullahi stressed that it is essential to provide improved technical directions for the implementation of the newly signed National Climate Change Act.
“Without doubt, Climate Change is no longer a distant threat; it is a reality and a sign of what lies ahead. Climate Change is perhaps the biggest challenge faced by our generation.
“The Technical Working Capacity Building Workshop is highly commendable as this would help to strengthen the capacity and capabilities of future professionals in the field of Climate Change and Climate Science.
Director-General of the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (NIALS) Professor Muhammed Tawfiq Ladan said lawmakers have a critical role to play by ensuring that the Climate Change Act is implemented across all sectors.
He noted that “Climate Change activities are very capital intensive and must be funded that is why the national assembly must appropriate funds for it or else all efforts and this is in addition to the oversight function on the Climate Change Commission.
The Act by virtue of its power to protect the environment including the climate against any harm, the legislature is supposed to and has an obligation to appropriate funds in the budget and provide appropriate funds in the budget to the Climate Change fund established by the Act because the law says the national assembly is responsible for providing funds through appropriation.”
Ladan explained that section 15 subsection 1 paragraph A, of the climate change Act ensures that the National Climate Change Council, (NCCC), which is to be established, can make use of the money that has been appropriated into the Climate Change fund is used in the fight against Climate Change in Nigeria.
National Coordinator of the Climate Parliament Nigeria, Dr Nkiruka Chidia Maduekwe, said the delay in establishing the council will lead to a setback and slow momentum in the fight against Climate Change because it is the number one vehicle through which the Climate Change Act will be implemented.
She said, “what we are doing here is very essential with regards to pushing for the implementation of the Climate Change Act 2021 and the technical capacity building workshop aims to inform and create awareness with the members of parliament and key ministries listed as members of the national council.”
Dr Maduekwe said the awareness and reawakening of the knowledge of what each stakeholder’s role in the overall scheme of things with regards to the implementation of the Act.
“We are supposed to have the had the national council on Climate Change established but up to now, it has not been inaugurated and that is stalling a lot of things because that council is also going to inform the approval of the carbon budget that the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Budget and National Planning are supposed to create hand in hand.
What needs to be done is the inauguration of this council and the time to do it is now not yesterday because we need to ask ourselves what is Nigeria bringing to the table come COP 27,” she adds.
Chairperson of the Climate Parliament and federal lawmaker, Sam Onuigbo, noted that Nigeria’s loudest statements on Climate Change were the country setting 2060 to attain net-zero and Mr President signing the Climate Change Act.
“To see the Act not being implemented with the inauguration of the Council even when there is a clear timeline for certain things to be done, as stipulated in the Act, should be a source of concern to Nigerians,” he lamented.
