The Coalition of NGOs on sustainable and healthy environments on Monday, April 22, 2019 urged the Federal Government to adhere to the international community’s call for a conducive environment by honouring environmental treaties.
Its national coordinator, Dr Odigha Odigha, gave the advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.
Odigha was commenting on the 2019 World Earth Day with the theme: “Protect Our Species”.
According to Odigha, Nigeria is a signatory to many international environmental treaties targeted at ameliorating the impact of environmental degradationamong its inhabitants.
“We are, therefore, advocating on this year’s Earth Day celebration, that government should respond positively to the international community’s call for a more conducive environment.
“It should also make do with the things it had promised to do.
“The cleaning up of Ogoni is a welcome development but government should do more to practicalise the exercise,” he said.
Odigha said that the Earth Day Celebration was being used to raise awareness on environmental issues and the negative impact of human activities on mother earth.
He said that Nigeria had less than 10 per cent of its forest covered while the world body responsible for the environment prescribed 25 per cent as the minimum standard.
Odigha said that despite this, the coalition and other environmental agencies in and outside Nigeria had been fighting against the destruction of Cross River Forest.
He said that this was because it had remained the only existing forest in the country up till date.
He said that going by the theme of the 2019 Earth Day; ‘Protect Our Species’ one could imagine the species that would go into extinction should the the Cross River Forest be destroyed.
Odigha said that so far, the coalition of NGOs had collected over 400,000 signatories across the globe to ensure that the forest is not destroyed.
He said that the coalition and all environmental lovers were committed to ensuring that the nation’s forests were protected besides the ecosystems.
The earth day network believes that the rate of extinctions of species can still be slowed.
It reports that many of the declining, threatened and endangered species could still be recovered.
It said that this could be achieved should a global movement of consumers, voters, educators, faith leaders, and scientists demand an immediate action against environmental degradation.
By Chidinma Agu
