The general elections in Nigeria are a time when Nigerians make critical decisions. As the 2023 general election approaches in Nigeria, Health of Mother Earth Foundation and other environmental inclined organizations organized an environmental presidential debate for aspirants to state their desire for a saner and greener Nigeria. The objective was to provide a platform for these presidential candidates in the 2023 general elections; to discuss their plans and strategies in addressing the critical environmental and climate challenges facing the country.
The Town hall meeting, which held on the 7th of February 2023 at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Abuja—Abuja, played host to environmentalists, academicians, politicians, journalist and over one thousand students as well as members of environmentally impacted communities. Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA) and We The People (WTP) had four presidential candidatesOmoyele Sowore of African Action Congress (AAC), Dumebi Kachikwu of African Democratic Congress (ADC) Adewole Adabayo of Social Democratic Party (SDP) and Rabiu Kwakwanso of the New Nigerian People’s Party (NNPP) who represented his party’s national chairman was Rufai Ahmed Alkali in attendance to speak on their plans for the environment.
The Vice Chancellor of the University of Abuja, Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah, who was represented by the Deputy Vice Chancellor Admin Prof Abubakar Abba while welcoming the guests, stressed the importance of the environment as he pointed the fact that “ordinary Nigerians depend on environmental resources for survival such as food, medicine, and for housing”. He urged the candidates to understand how each region of the country share in the environmental and climate crises.
The Director of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), Nnimmo Bassey in his opening remarks, noted that environmental and climate change concerns in Nigeria are unequivocal as he mentioned that the important point of the environment is life which cannot be enjoyed under a degraded environment. He warned about the likelihood of the Niger Delta situation repeating itself elsewhere in Nigeria, particularly in Gombe, Bauchi and Lagos state. He further addressed the foreign concepts such as Green Economy and Blue Economy being imported into our policies without interrogation and with disregard to the precautionary principle. “We are experiencing a loss of biodiversity due to the introduction of toxic genetically modified organisms into the environment, every region is facing its own peculiar ecological problems and this could be a unifying factor in a nation faced with many divisive factors”.
He further stated that the focus of political leaders on the environment has been largely ignored which he stated to mean that “the indicators that they care at all about the environment are often only when they move to destroy undeserved and largely autonomous communities termed slums, and sometimes a cosmetic sanitation exercise, thus we expressed hope that the 2023 presidential candidates would act differently if they emerge as new presidents”.
During the panel discussion, questions were asked which touched on their plans and strategies in addressing climate change and other environmental concerns in Nigeria such included the challenges and opportunities of Nigeria’s transition to a green economy and low-carbon development would be; how Nigeria can lead the global efforts to address climate change; and plans to address unresolved environmental challenges, resource exploitation, and land degradation in historically marginalized communities in the country. Candidates also shared their respective views on how Nigeria can be well regulated in order of multinational companies not to bastardize the environment.
Mr.Omoyele Sowore of the AAC, while stressing the need for Nigeria to embrace cleaner sources of energy, noted that he had no congratulations for those who have newly discovered oil on their land. “In no time your land will become a wasteland and you will end up drinking your oil because the world is moving away from oil as an energy source.” In responding to a question on oil pollution in the delta and elsewhere in Nigeria, he said that Nigeria needed a pan-African knowledge base across all sectors, including in environmental and climate law and policies.
“How can we expect anything good to come out of a climate conference that is attended by polluters in private jets? The polluters are the ones sitting on the high tables, there can never be green results from such conferences.” He further said, in relation to environmental degradation, that the conversation should begin with compensation for, and cleanup of, the degraded environment.
In his own remarks on the point, Mr. Adewole Adeboye began by noting that it was erroneous for one to address the environment in the second person. “We are part of the environment, but the government we have over the years is a threat to the environment,” he said, to make a dichotomy between two types of environment: the natural and the social. The latter that had to do with human interactions within the socio-political institutions they build, according to him, was as important as the natural environment.
Mr. Adebayo also talked about poverty as the only thing that caused people to fall back on the destructive habits for survival. He, thus, emphasized the need to deploy technological innovations to help Nigerians live more sustainably as well as the need to hold polluters to pay by way of compensation and investment in reforestation.
“It is not every time we comply with environmental standards that it leads to destruction of the economy,” he said. “Overall, we must be a community of serious-minded people. When we do not have a leader that is a proper chief executive by ensuring the environmental regulatory agencies are up and doing, the result is what we have currently. And the good thing is I do not need to attend an international conference to learn how to regulate Nigerian environment,” he said. In relation to the call to abandon oil, the SDP’s presidential candidate said, Nigeria has little to lose because she has more gas than crude but the problem is, the resources are majorly being exported.
The ADC candidate aligned with the views that it was wrong to adopt foreign models all round. He said many scientific research results from foreign countries had commercial motives and Nigeria must ensure that such models fit well into local circumstances before adopting them, stressing the need for homegrown research. Also, like the SDC candidate, Mr Kachikwu emphasized the need for multinational corporations in Nigeria to be made to operate strictly within the confines of the law. The ADC candidate, Mr. Kachikwu, sees conflict as a result of the tussle for scarce resources. He said he would curb the insecurity challenge by securing the national borders. “If you must enter Nigeria it must be done legally; and if you must reside here you must reside peaceably,” he stated unequivocally. Mr. Kachukwu stated his desire to promote ranching over open-grazing, as he promised to establish a system where all meat would be sold in licensed shops with tracking mechanism to ensure all meat are traceable to the ranch that produced them.
Quite notable from NNPP camp was the emphasis on production of fertilizers, chemicals, and pesticides to “revive the agricultural sector”. The party chairman stressed that a revolution was ongoing in the environmental sphere and the intellectual community must continue to interrogate the issues around this revolution.
The respective candidates expressed their dispositions in relation to the role scarce environmental resources play in the insecurity in Nigeria, with particular reference to the depletion of water in Lake Chad and the consequent farmers-herdsmen conflict in some parts of the country. The town hall gave opportunity for students, lecturers, media and environmentally impacted communities to hear from and interact with each prospective president on salient issues concerning the environment.
The moderators, Edmund Obilo of Splash FM, Nkoli Omohudu of AIT and Sheriff Ghali a lecturer at the university of Abuja during the discussions touched on plans and strategies for addressing climate change and how Nigerians can lead the global efforts to address climate change; and degradation in historically marginalized communities in the country.