Nigeria needs to show leadership, says legislator

AllAfrica.com, via the Daily Independent (Lagos): Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Climate Change, Eziuche Ubani, has said that Nigeria has failed to show leadership on climate change issues on the African continent. Ubani said at the on-going UN climate change conference in Poznan, Poland that the country had not come to terms with the realities of climate change.

"Nigeria is still lagging behind. Our status at this conference is a clear pointer to the fact that we still have not understood what climate change is all about," he said. He said that other small African countries, including Ghana, Senegal and South Africa, were fully on ground here in Poznan, with delegates from all sectors of their economy, adding: "These are countries that Nigeria should be showing the way considering our previous role on the continent and our size, resources and landmarks," he said.

"The whole world are gathered here in view of the urgency and currency of climate change impacts and the opportunities tackling it has created but we as a country is still not on top of the issue," Ubani said, citing the rapid desert encroachment in the north and flooding in the south and other visible impacts of climate change in the country as reasons why government needed to act fast.

He proposed effective climate change governance requiring fortification and adequate financing of the unit handling climate change issues in the country as a way of bringing the issues to the front burner in Nigeria. He also called for the urgent establishment of an independent agency to articulate climate change issues and programme for the country….

One of the lagoons surrounding Lagos, shot by Contimm, Wikimedia Commons