The Federal University of Technology (FUT) in Akure, Ondo State, Nigeria will, beginning on Monday, August 4 2014, host the Trans-African HydroMeteorological Observatory (TAHMO) sensor design competition, under plans by the TAHMO to develop a network of 20,000 weather stations across Africa by 2018. The organisers are seeking to catalog and make accessible all current and historic climate data so that interested people can start their data analysis efforts, avoid redundancy in TAHMO installations, and prioritise the coming years of effort.
According to the Head of the Department of Meteorology at FUT Akure, Dr Ahmed Balogun, the idea behind the project is to develop a dense network of hydro-meteorological monitoring stations in sub-Saharan Africa: one every 30 km, which entails the installation of 20,000 such stations.
“By applying innovative sensor technology and ICT, TAHMO stations are both inexpensive and robust. Stations will be placed at schools and integrated in the educational program, adding richness to the curriculum and helping foster a new generation of scientists. Local weather data will be combined with models and satellite observations to obtain insight into the distribution of water and energy stocks and fluxes,” he discloses.
He adds: “Within this project, we have built a prototype of an acoustic disdrometer (rain gauge) that can be produced for €10, less than one percent of the cost of a commercial equivalent with the same specifications. The disdrometer was developed in The Netherlands and tested in Tanzania for a total project cost of €5000.
“Monitoring Africa’s environment is an important challenge if the continent’s resources are to be used in an optimal and sustainable manner. Food production and harvest predictions would profit from improved understanding of water availability over space and time. Presently, African observation networks are very limited, and national governments and regional planners do not have the data to make proper decisions regarding investments in water resources infrastructure.”
Nick van de Giesen of the Department of Water Management, Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, stresses: “The ability to access historical climate data is critical in order to efficiently manage water resources. The limited number of weather stations in Africa is spread out over enormous distances; most are found in northern and southern Africa, leaving huge data gaps in the central part of the continent. Additionally, those African climate data which are currently available are not arranged in a convenient way for users to access; data sets are often incomplete and restricted to the public.
“There is often a lack of communication within countries and regions, creating data gaps at multiple levels. Another key challenge for climate monitoring in Africa is the availability of historical data; most collected data have been recorded on paper, and not cataloged electronically. With these data literally sitting forgotten on shelves in offices around the continent, they are at great risk of being lost forever. Accurate climate data are essential for agriculture, weather prediction and climate modeling. With an increase in quantity and quality of climate stations, along with the incorporation of historical data, we can move forward towards the goal of obtaining accurate climate data.”
According to the organisers, the objective of the TAHMO Sensor Design Competition is to design innovative sensors that measure a weather or hydrological variable and are both inexpensive and robust. They are hopeful that the new sensing methods will be resilient, low-maintenance and cost effective.
“The main goal of the workshop week is to realise the sensor designs and working together on connecting them to the internet and each other. At the end of the week, we hope to have a working network of sensors, producing digitalised data. The workshop week is therefore is not a competition; there also won’t be a final winner,” adds van de Giesen.
The event is organised by FUTA, Delft University and the Oregun State University in the USA.
Twenty-four participants are drawn from FUTA (Departments of Meteorology, Physics and Electrical Engineering) Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, University of Ibadan and Redeemer University, who will design sensors to detect and measure heat, rainfall, sunlight intensity, humidity, solar radiation, wind direction and infrared wind speed.
Mariam Lady Yunusa, Head of Partners and Inter Agency Coordination at the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) in Nairobi, Kenya, looks at the implications of Nigeria being classified as a fragile state – as well as realities on ground
Yunusa
“Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education”
-Martin Luther King Jr.
On 27 June 2013, I received an email from my colleague Dan, alerting on the phenomenon of fragile states and how my organisation, the UN-Habitat, should position itself to respond to what is increasingly becoming a perverse situation. I opened the attachment first and quickly scanned through the three-page description of what ails the world’s weakest nations. Here is how fragile states were defined:
Fragile states are countries that face particularly extreme poverty and development challenges and are at high risk of further decline, or even failure. Typically, government and state structures lack the capacity to provide public safety and security, apply principles and practices of sound governance or promote economic growth that benefits all… All fragile states are different but features they all share are weak governance, failing public institutions, and instability or conflict, all of which contribute to dismal growth prospects…The regional and international spill over effects from these countries include violent conflict, instability, organized crime, forced migration, human trafficking, deteriorating public health, etc.
“Sad, very sad” I began to think, “in this day and age with so many advancements in medicine, technology, information, transport and culture that any country should be so defined”. I felt pity for the countries which were suffering from the “brokenness” or “fragility” so graphically described, until I read the cover email to the end where Dan had listed 48 countries that fell into the category of “fragile”. There it was, Nigeria was on the list! Then suddenly my pity turned into shock, fear, embarrassment, and then anger.
My anger showed when Mohammed, my young intern from University of Lagos, walked into the office and asked what the matter was. I gave him the email. He read it and gently placed it back on my desk with a shrug and a smile. The look in my eyes must have asked what was funny. He said, “Mummy, you are this upset because you have lived outside Nigeria for long. Things are bad at home o!”
Well, I may be living outside Nigeria for now, spared from the blackouts, the lead poisoning from generators everywhere, and jerry cans for water or fuel. But in my work at the United Nations, I am in close contact with home and I know enough to know that things could be better, only I didn’t ever think it could get this bad… for Nigeria to be categorised as a fragile state?
In a tailspin
I am still seething with anger as I write this piece. The disparity between Nigeria’s prospects and her current social, economic and political realities is befuddling. How did we descend from a vibrant productive country of the groundnut pyramids, cocoa bean bags, barrels of palm oil, bales of cotton, hides and skin, gold, tin and timber, to an importer of toothpicks? How did we descend from a country whose graduates were admitted into reputable universities abroad even ahead of their transcripts, to one where our first class products are subjected to catch up classes?
It’s this oil thing isn’t it? Elsewhere, in the hands of wise, careful and committed leaders, the ‘black gold’ has sustained enviable, sustainable socio-economic development of countries – with abounding opportunities for individual and corporate growth. But oil has hurt us, instead of blessing us. Our leaders today are caught in a frenzy of aggrandisement at all levels. The country is beset by chronic internal strife and unstable governments, corruption, poor human development and human rights records, and has become a hub for international crime. Hundreds of thousands of Nigerians have become refugees in their own country. Looking in from outside, I have seen the rest of Africa go from deference to Nigeria in public forums to turning away faces with a sarcastic grin or outright contempt! Since the last decade especially, Nigeria has consistently been found wanting on virtually all key governance indicators. In 2012, the country ranked 153 out of 187 countries and territories on the human development index, putting it in the low human development category. Now, many countries in Africa have found oil within their borders and they point to Nigeria’s tragic story as example of how not to use their new found wealth from oil.
What is wrong with us? Everyone who has spoken on this topic invariably puts it down to “leadership”. Since the civil war, whether it is rule by the gun or by the ballot, Nigerians have not had decisive, value-driven and single minded leaders who could set the country on the path to sustainable growth and development. I grew up as a young patriotic girl whose country had done everything to establish her on a firm foundation of progress in a prosperous environment – personal, communal, public and national. But it would seem that I belong to a fast-disappearing generation which came of age at a time when honesty and the joy of a hard day’s work were in and of themselves the satisfaction and reward. Today, a spirit of greed and graft of unparalleled dimensions has taken over my country.
We are ruled by weak governments which have successively paved the way for abuse of power, nepotism, tribalism and favouritism for private gain by public officials, politicians and rulers. The masses of Nigeria are trapped in a vicious triangular struggle for food, shelter and clothing-for survival. Our youth do not have the strength of character to delay gratification as they watch their leaders loot away their common wealth. We are ruled by brigands. Masses across Africa are suffering under leaders let loose in an age of affluence and loss of the social values of caution, control and pedigree. But while other African leaders invest their loot in their economies, in which case it can be argued that such resources are not lost to their countries, Nigeria’s leaders stash their loot abroad where such resources are lost to the country in the event of the demise of the owners. The handsome incomes we have earned from oil have not benefitted us proportionately because a few of our leaders have taken much of the money to feed their insatiable appetite for power and control.
Nigeria is a veracious consumer of products that are imported from more organized economies. Why should Nigerians troop to Shoprite to buy daily supplies including beans? Are Nigerians too poor to put up their own supermarkets? Why should Nigeria be known to be the foremost Champagne importer in the world? Why do we break every rule within three months of its passing? We start but do not finish, we acquire but do not maintain, we design but do not implement, we initiate but do not sustain. My beloved country is in a tailspin.
So what to do?
All solutions in the books have been propounded be it Vision 2010 or 2020:20. We do not need any more programmes. What is urgently needed is exemplary leadership, good governance and efficient management of resources. Nigeria’s broken system must be straightened – those who do well, exceptionally well, must be rewarded and those who make a mess and hurt the larger polity punished. Both reward and punishment must be made public. Nigerian children need to see the thieving parents of their friends go to jail, so they can understand why their single mother who works so hard would not allow them to cut corners to forge ahead. We need to reconstruct our values and redeem the moral core of what makes us citizens of Nigeria. We need a leader who has the courage of a personal conviction which he/she is ready to champion and even sacrifice his/her life for.
The world celebrates Nelson Mandela as the greatest human being alive because of his personal example. Mandela rose above his own needs and wants to give South Africans, freedom and hope in their country as liberated citizens. Nigerian children born after the Biafra war do not have a clue what nationhood means. For them it is about what they can get for themselves by the shortest possible means. For the older generation, things have fallen apart because nationhood is held hostage by a self-seeking, uncommitted, privileged few. We need a servant leader, a self- sacrificing one who looks after the interest of the larger whole at all times.
Transformative Change
Something has to happen soon if we are not to go the way of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria because our young people are rudderless and they are angry.
In an exclusive interview granted to the July edition of the Africa Report, President Jonathan was quoted to have reeled off a string of plans for Nigeria: i) to stabilise our legendary unstable national power supply, ii) moving away from subsidised farming to farming for wealth creation, basically farming for export “to become a big man”! (My emphasis). Nigeria must resolve the energy question. It is said that the sector is hijacked by a cabal of generator importers. This is so simplistic. These characters are not ghosts, they are fellow Nigerians, and they live with us – the same words which were echoed to me by someone last month after innocent school children were gunned down and roasted in their sleep in a school in Yobe State. We have been parroting the attainment of 4000 megawatts of electricity as a major achievement while what we need is 40,000 megawatts. This would have been laughable if it wasn’t pathetic!
Nigeria must develop structures that work. Let’s stop personalising public offices and seek rather to institutionalise them, so that systems work regardless of who occupies the office. Strangers coming into Nigeria must know where to go and find what they need, without having to know an underhand operator. The workings of the system should be public knowledge. Americans say Nigeria is a key country in Sub-Saharan Africa, critical to the success of their policy interests, but President Obama has visited Africa twice, and on both visits, he skipped Nigeria. Responding to questions by the press on what guided his choice of countries to visit, he said “I wish to invest in strong institutions, not in strongmen” – this speaks volumes.
What sort of leader will get us there?
Nigeria is in need of a strong value-driven leader who adheres to the core moral principles of integrity, patriotism, dynamism, vision courage, responsibility, respect for the rule of law and prudent management of resources. Such a leader must be selfless and above all have respect for the dignity and rights of the human being. Nigeria’s reformist leader must be one with a high and strong emotional intelligence quotient, equipped to be his own master. We need a single minded person who believes in the strength of their own conviction. Our leaders must be energetic, young and dynamic – between 40 and 60 years old, well educated, well connected with other world leaders, and well-connected at home with young people, who channel the aspirations of youth and women’s groups into policy and sustainable programmes.
When El-Rufai came and put some sanity back into the planning of Abuja, he was maligned, and yes, being the maverick that he is, he may have done a few things out of line. But whoever said pulling out an ailing molar tooth was fun? We are so cleavaged as a society that every well-meaning leader who tries to do things right invariably gets vilified for not belonging to the right religion or tribe. We must set minimum qualifications for those who aspire to be leaders. Those without experience, known track records or pedigree must be compelled to attend leadership finishing schools. Leaders must have experience, exposure and knowledge to lead at the national level.
Fred Swaniker, the Founder and CEO of the African Leadership Academy, says “this is Africa’s time”, and I concur. While in other countries, a generation of young leaders have formed themselves into a network of progressives ready to think out of the box and take up the challenge to clean up the down-trodden, sick and impoverished image of their countries, prejudicial killings and serial murders proceed as a daily matter of course in Nigeria, as members of the National Assembly busy themselves with passing laws that have little or no relevance to the development of the country.
Nigeria’s reformist leader must be one ready to lead by personal example which is the hallmark to transformative leadership. The leader Nigeria needs must know how to identify other leaders with the requisite skills to establish structures and systems around him that work. He or she that qualifies to rule Nigeria at the highest level must be acceptable across all divides and not be zoned. Zoning alienates the rest of Nigeria.
Talking of Solutions
Standard Chartered Bank’s Ebenezer Essoka identifies three priorities for Africa: i) Infrastructure, ii) Education and unemployment and iii) Regulatory environment. Rating infrastructure as top of the list, one couldn’t agree with him more, and when we talk Africa, read Nigeria because our country rates low on all 3 counts. Detailing from these three priorities, one could reel out many policy directions. But the state of our country is such that making such recommendations would amount to pouring water into a raffia basket – full of holes. When the foundation is destroyed, what can the righteous do?
There is not a strategic solution, approach or programme proposal that has not been propounded and they number in the thousands- recommendations of committees, task forces, commissions, review panels, etc. We are not short of solutions, what we lack is the will, courage and sincerity to pull together and pull our country out from the moral tailspin into which it has fast descended. We must stop the corruption, and do a turn around to heal our land. If we do not do it peacefully and concertedly, it will be done anyway, and I don’t want to think of what that alternative could be.
To firmly handle the toxic political goings-on at the National Assembly, in the States and with the insurgency, requires that President Jonathan be as wise as a serpent and as gentle as a dove — two antithetical characteristics needed to survive and perform effectively as a leader in Nigeria. Nigerians are easy people to lead, except when they are difficult. They would be trusting of any leader who would not steal their money, but invest it to give them good schools, functioning hospitals, smooth roads, peace and security for them to earn their living and raise their families. Nigerians can tease their leaders to tears, but they would not lie about a good leader who means well for them. They desperately wish for honest leaders who will tell them the truth, who will rise and be counted at a time when the nation is threatened by a constellation of evil –leaders who will lead, not deal, with them.
Epilogue
I raised my children to believe in Nigeria. While their friends remained abroad to pursue quick money and escape the collapsing system back home, I prevailed on them to return to their beloved fatherland to contribute to rebuilding the country at its peak of brokenness (I thought things were bad enough then). Ten years later, I say with all sense of modesty that God has honoured that patriotic choice which was borne out of a dogged belief in the potentials of my country for the future of my children. But, today, they are at a crossroads as they struggle to raise their own children. The more outspoken of them asked me the other day “Mummy you raised us to respect Nigeria, to hope in Nigeria and to give to Nigeria, and those values have brought us this far. But now we are raising our children and we do not see your Nigeria. We see a different Nigeria which is poles apart from yours. What should we say to your grandchildren?” I looked at my son and sighed, and with a heavy heart, thought…“God dey”.
A friend of mine once told a story of how he made money by simply adhering to the environmental laws of one European country. It was during UNFCCC COP 15 in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2009, when he travelled as a civil society delegate from Nigeria. Towards the end of the heated climate talks he discovered that he did not have any money to shop with; and naturally, anybody coming back from foreign travel is expected to “bring back something”. He had earlier used his pocket money to buy warm clothing because during that period Copenhagen was unbearably cold.
Environment Minister, Laurentia Mallam
He almost lost hope, and was about to resign himself to the ugly prospect of “going home with nothing”, when fate seemed to smile on him. At a party organised for participants from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) at Copenhagen, my friend met a man who told him that as stipulated by the environmental laws of Denmark (in fact, Europe), empty cans and bottles of beer and other drinks are returned to retailers in exchange for cash. This buy-back policy is part of the Extended Producer Responsibility of the beverage manufactures, who then mop them up from the retailers and middlemen. Trust the Nigerian. He totally ignored the party and concentrated on picking used bottles and empty alcohol containers at the event – discreetly, of course. He dutifully returned them to a supermarket, and was paid handsomely according to the number in his waste cache. That was how he came back to Nigeria with some European shopping bags full of goodies for family and friends.
Of course, many people will conclude that this cannot happen in Nigeria. But surely, it can. Yes, it can. If and when the many companies doing business in our shores are forced to abide by the Extended Producer Responsibility Programme, which is actually covered in the laws of our country. It is the work of National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency to enforce it.
According to Wikipedia, in the field of waste management, EPR is a strategy designed to promote the integration of environmental costs associated with goods throughout their life cycles into the market price of the products. The concept was first formally introduced in Sweden by Thomas Lindhqvist in a 1990 report to the Swedish Ministry of the Environment. In subsequent reports prepared for the Ministry, the following definition emerged: “EPR is an environmental protection strategy to reach an environmental objective of a decreased total environmental impact of a product, by making the manufacturer of the product responsible for the entire life-cycle of the product and especially for the take-back, recycling and final disposal.”
Regrettably, manufacturers in Nigeria are not abiding to this responsibility, which is very crucial to the environmental health of the nation. In fact, I noticed some locally made beverages whose bottles are not taken back by retailers. They are not sold as per ‘contents only’ rule, but are given to the consumer who is expected to dispose of the bottles. Because of this ugly trend, this particular beverage bottles constitute unbearable nuisance in every corner of many Nigeria cities. The bottles are not even picked up by scavengers because they are of little value to them as recycle raw materials, considering that Nigeria has not developed a wholistic recycling infrastructure and culture. This is not supposed to be so.
It was recently reported in the media that the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, while giving a keynote address at a one day Stakeholders’ Meeting on the Implementation of Extended Producer Responsibility Programme in Abuja, called for stakeholder collaboration to tackle the menace of industrial waste littering the country.
“Specifically, section 8 of the National Environmental (Food, Beverages, Tobacco sector) Regulations 2009, states that all manufacturers of various brands of products shall establish a Buy-Back Programme for bottles and other packaging for products, and subscribe to an extended products stewardship programme,” he said.
There was also another report two years ago after NESREA’s 5th stakeholders’ forum on the new institutional mechanism for environmental protection and sustainable development in Nigeria. At the event NESREA, vowed to stop treating environmental offenders with kid gloves while saying that the grace days were over because the previous five years of the agency had been a learning period. It said in the communiqué released at the end of the programme that, “Industry and business should be aware of their corporate social responsibility and the need to adopt and implement the extended producer responsibility programme (including take-back or buy-back programme) as a key step to promote good environmental governance.”
The problem in Nigeria is that there are many laws and policies but few of them are implemented. The lawmakers should go beyond words. They should team up with NESREA to wield the big stick. Every Nigerian should be worried by the neglect of corporate social responsibility of manufacturers in waste recycling. But just worrying about it can never get the job done.
The truth is that these manufacturers are businessmen and they want to make profit, and environmental best practice is not profit-friendly. This is why in the developed world environmental laws bite so hard that corporate institutions fear any eco-related lawsuit. Over here, businesses just do what they like to the Nigerian environment because they know that neither the government nor the people will notice their environmental malpractice. But the irony is that they can afford to pay N20 million for Tuface to perform in their corporate event but they will not give the same amount of money to clean up the waste generated by their products. Why? Because the people are blind to the environmental pollution left in the wake of the activities of these companies. But these same Nigerians would be all starry eyed at the five-minute performance by MI, or Flavour, or Tiwa Savage; or the Toyota Corolla they win in a random annual corporate promo. What a world!
Nigerian NGOs need to do more in sensitising the citizenry and making them aware of the responsibility of corporate organisations in waste management. LG, Samsung, Panasonic, Blackberry, Nokia and many other multinationals flood Nigerian homes with their products but when these items reach their end-of-life the companies have no plans of buying them back from the consumers in order to help the country take care of the hazardous waste that these products have become.
The Nigerian government must make it mandatory for local manufacturers, multinationals and importers to abide by EPR as a prerequisite for validation of practice just as we have Environmental Impact Assessment certifications. Products that should come under EPR certifications are many. Some of them are cell phones and accessories, beverages in non-biodegradable packages, electronics (desktop and notebook computers, printers, fax machines and TV), automobile lubricants, pesticides, solvents, flammable liquids, lead acid batteries, paint, small appliances and power tools (toasters, microwave, vacuum cleaner, sewing machines etc), and tyres.
While we are wasting time, the world is moving into a waste-free future. In many parts of Nigeria, dumpsites are still being used for waste disposal instead of landfills; whereas the world is even going beyond landfill. The current international practice is more-recycle-less-landfill. A few days ago, the European Union proposed a new law whereby Europeans will need to recycle 70 percent of urban waste and 80 percent of packaging waste by 2030. To be candid, if our environmental laws remain weak, all those European waste – many of them hazardous of course – would soon be headed to Nigeria.
Minimum energy performance standards (MEPS) for refrigerating appliances emerged last week in Lagos as the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) rallied a team of specialists to explore and adapt the IEC 62552 as a Nigerian Industrial Standard.
The IEC 62552 is an energy consumption test standard that is presently being harmonised internationally.
Dr Joseph Odumosu, Director-General of the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON)
The GEF (Global Environment Facility)-UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) Energy Efficiency Programme (titled: “Promoting energy efficiency in residential and public sector in Nigeria”) has been supporting SON in the endeavor, which will put in place energy efficiency measures while addressing the nation’s high consumption pattern.
Deputy Director, Energy Commission of Nigeria (ECN), Okon Ekpenyong, disclosed that a study was carried out to assess the current level of energy efficiency of some appliances used in the country in order to set the MEPS for such appliances, like lighting, refrigerators and air conditioners.
UNDP-GEF Energy Efficiency Programme national coordinator, Etiosa Uyigue, stated that basic equipment in refrigerating appliances such as compressor, thermostat and insulation play vital roles in ensuring minimal energy consumption pattern so need to be in good working condition.
“While the compressor should work and automatically shut down at intervals, thick insulation is required for appliances in the tropics. But most of the fairly-used fridges from abroad come with thin insulation because of the weather over there. That is why this programme discourages the use of second hand products,” he said.
Uyigue
Uyigue described the setting of the MEPS as one of the four main pillars of the programme, even as he listed others to include: assisting government in enforcing energy efficiency policies and laws; embarking on awareness creation to change behavior and to build the capacity of stakeholders to imbibe energy efficiency best practices; and, support processes and programmes that will upscale the penetration of energy saving equipment in Nigeria.
The programme has also supported SON to develop MEPS for compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), which has been approved by the Nigerian Standard Board and now enforceable in the country. Additionally, two complete set of light testing analysis equipment were procured and installed in the laboratories of SON and the National Centre for Energy Efficiency and Conservation (NCEEC).
“The testing facilities have enhanced the ability of SON to enforce the newly-approved lighting standard. The NCEEC is complementing the laboratory in SON and at the same time serves as a platform to strengthen research in the area of energy efficiency,” stressed Uyigue.
He added that, to complement the MEPS for refrigerators project, UNDP/GEF has procured energy performance testing laboratory equipment for SON to enable it effectively enforce the newly-decided standard.
Declaration by Laureates of the Right Livelihood Award on Gaza:
As recipients of the Right Livelihood Award, popularly known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize“, we strongly condemn the killing of hundreds of children and innocent civilians in Gaza by the Israeli Defence Forces, the indiscriminate firing of rockets by Hamas against Israeli civilians, and we mourn the continued suffering of Gaza’s inhabitants.
Gaza. Photo: Courtesy statecrime.org
Gaza faces shortages of water and electricity supply, of hospitals, physicians and medicine, while bombs and bullets kill and injure both civilian people and health workers in a spiral of violence and hopelessness. Around 24 % of all those who have lost their lives in Gaza, as a result of Israeli bombing and military invasion, are children.
Nevertheless, the responsibility for such deaths lies not only with the joint and manifold accountabilities of Israel’s soldiers, Hamas’ fighters and their governments. Other governments are responsible either directly or indirectly through the transfer of weapons, military advice and silence. Such countries and the United Nations seem not to have learned from the past. Meanwhile, even as the violence grows rapidly in Gaza, negotiations move at an incredibly slow pace and are hindered by the vested interests of countries that don’t face any bloodshed in this conflict. Dialogue and negotiations cannot be replaced by the use of military force. Revenge solely produces revenge and bloodshed solely produces more bloodshed.
Nobody will forget the recent scenes of broken school books in the streets of Gaza and the broken lives of the children who used them. Their dead bodies splattered near their books, which are never to be used again, paint a tragic picture of unparalleled cruelty. Nobody has the right to end their lives nor to threaten the lives of those children that still survive. They are also our children.
In this context we strongly support the outstanding and courageous work, determination and perseverance – amidst the thunder of bombs – of our fellow recipient Raji Sourani (RLA 2013, Palestine) and his colleagues at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, who are denouncing the killings of innocent civilians and the continuity of a dirty non-declared war being waged against the principles of international humanitarian law. We also want to express our deepest admiration for the work of Israeli peace organisations such as Gush Shalom (RLA 2001), and the incredible work of all medical personnel operating in Gaza right now continuously highlighted by our friends at Physicians For Human Rights-Israel (RLA 2010), who continue to hold up the torch of humanity despite being exposed to the inhumane machines of war.
As recipients of the Right Livelihood Award, we urge the United Nations, the European Union and regional bodies, such as the Arab League and the Organisation of American States, and countries from all over the world to join their voices, to condemn these unacceptable violations of human rights, to request an immediate ceasefire, lifting of the blockade of Gaza and to ask for the beginning of new peace talks. And to also halt all actions that perpetuate this conflict, hinder a peace settlement and supply the warring parties with arms. If we don’t act urgently, more children and innocent people will be killed in the following days, in the following hours, in the following minutes, in the following seconds.
Signatories to statement: Dr. Ibrahim Abouleish, Founder, SEKEM, Egypt (RLA 2003); Swami Agnivesh, India (RLA 2004); Dr. Martin Almada, Paraguay (RLA 2002); Uri Avnery, Founder, Gush Shalom, Israel (RLA 2001); Dipal Barua, Former Managing Director, Grameen Shakti, now at Bright Green Energy Foundation, Bangladesh (RLA 2007); Nnimmo Bassey, Health of Mother Earth Foundation, Nigeria (RLA 2010); Andras Biro, Hungary (RLA 2005); Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice, South Korea (RLA 2003); Dr. Tony Clarke, Executive Director, Polaris Institute, Canada (RLA 2005); Comissão Pastoral da Terra (CPT), Brazil (RLA 1991); Prof. Dr. Anwar Fazal, Director, Right Livelihood College, Malaysia (RLA 1982); Prof. Dr. Johan Galtung, Norway (RLA 1987); Dr. Juan E. Garcés, Spain (RLA 1999); Dr. Inge Genefke, Denmark (RLA 1988); Gush Shalom, Israel (RLA 2001); Dr. Monika Hauser, Founder, Medica Mondiale, Germany (RLA 2008); Dr. Hans Herren, Founder of Biovision Foundation, Switzerland (RLA 2013); Dr. SM Mohamed Idris, Sahabat Alam Malaysia (RLA 1988), Consumers Association of Penang and the Third World Network, Malaysia; Bishop Erwin Kräutler, Brazil (RLA 2010); Dr. Katarina Kruhonja, Center for Peace, Nonviolence and Human Rights-Osijek, Croatia (RLA 1998); Birsel Lemke, Turkey (RLA 2000); Helen Mack Chang, Fundación Myrna Mack, Guatemala (RLA 1992); Dr. Ruchama Marton, Founder and President, Physicians for Human Rights, Israel (RLA 2010); Prof Dr. h.c. (mult.) Manfred Max-Neef, Director, Economics Institute, Universidad Austral de Chile, Chile (RLA 1983); Prof. Dr. Raúl A. Montenegro, President, Fundación para la defensa del ambiente, Argentina (RLA 2004); Frances Moore Lappé, Co-Founder, Small Planet Institute, USA (RLA 1987); Jacqueline Moudeina, Chad (RLA 2011); Helena Norberg-Hodge, Founder and Director, International Society for Ecology & Culture, United Kingdom (RLA 1986); Juan Pablo Orrego, President, Ecosistemas, Chile (RLA 1998); Medha Patkar, Narmada Bachao Andolan, India (RLA 1991); P K Ravindran, Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad, India (RLA 1996); Fernando Rendón, Co-Founder and Director, International Poetry Festival of Medellín, Colombia (RLA 2006); Dr. Sima Samar, Chairperson, Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, Afghanistan (RLA 2012); Dr. Vandana Shiva, Naydanya, India (RLA 1993); Prof. Michael Succow, Founder, Michael Succow Foundation for Nature Conservation, Germany, (RLA 1997); Suciwati, widow of Munir, KontraS, Indonesia (RLA 2000); Dr. Hanumappa Sudarshan, Karuna Trust & VGKK, India (RLA 1994); The Kvinna Till Kvinna Foundation, Sweden (RLA 2002); Shrikrishna Upadhyay, Executive Chairman, Support Activities for Poor Producers of Nepal, Nepal (RLA 2010); Prof. Dr. Theo van Boven, The Netherlands (RLA 1985); Martín von Hildebrand, Founder and Director, Fundación GAIA Amazonas, Colombia (RLA 1999); Dr. Paul F. Walker, Director, Environmental Security and Sustainability, Green Cross International, USA (RLA 2013); Alyn Ware, Global Coordinator, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, New Zealand/Switzerland (RLA 2009); Chico Whitaker Ferreira, Brazil (RLA 2006); Alla Yaroshinskaya, Russia (RLA 1992); Angie Zelter, Trident Ploughshares, United Kingdom (RLA 2001)
The Right Livelihood Award was established in 1980 to honour and support those “offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today”. It has become widely known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ and there are now 153 Laureates from 64 countries. The annual Award Ceremony takes place in the Swedish Parliament Building in December, with support by parliamentarians from all established political parties.
The Right Livelihood Award Foundation is based in Stockholm, Sweden. The prize is financed by individual donors.
Bothered about the protracted crisis over the Bonga Oil Spillage in the Niger Delta region, Minister of Environment, Laurentia Laraba Mallam, has given a marching order to Shell Petroleum Development Corporation (SPDC) to ensure that the matter is resolved amicably and expeditiously.
Mallam
Mallam told SPDC chairman in Nigeria, Mutiu Sunmonu, at a recent meeting in Abuja that the series of petitions inundating her office over the issue call for concern, adding that it is in the interest of all parties to get the matter settled soonest.
Expressing her appreciation over the patience of affected communities, Mallam said the Federal Government would not overstretch such tolerance.
She appealed to shoreline communities whose fishing activities are affected by the spillage to continue to exercise patience, adding that government is not unaware of the impact of the spillage on their livelihood and that everything humanly possible would be done to mitigate their sufferings.
Sunmonu, who was accompanied by the Managing Director/CEO of Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company (SNEPCO) and other company officials, told the minister that the corporation has carried out wide consultations with stakeholders, and that it is coming out with a mechanism that will put the matter to rest.
He disclosed that a committee of stakeholders made up of SPDC, Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), National Assembly (NASS), non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) is being set up to come up with recommendations aimed at resolving the matter amicably.
The Shell boss appealed to the minister whom he referred to as the neutral umpire to assist in the settlement of the dispute.
He also acknowledged the patience of the host communities, just as he sued for their continuous understanding.
Biological diversity and ecosystems last week featured prominently in the proposal of a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals of the 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly agreed by acclamation to forward to the General Assembly, setting the stage for better links between the implementation of the biodiversity agenda of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and the post-2015 sustainable development agenda.
de Souza Dia
“The results demonstrate the growing recognition that biodiversity is essential for sustainable development. Now we need to ensure that biodiversity remains strongly in the final outcomes for the post-2015 agenda. We further need to ensure that the implementation of these goals and targets is done in a meaningful and effective manner,” said Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, Executive Secretary of the CBD.
The outcome of the deliberations of the Open Working Group is extremely positive from the perspective of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the implementation of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. Biodiversity and ecosystems are included throughout the proposed SDGs. There are two goals directly related to biodiversity: Goal 14 on oceans and coasts, and Goal 15 on terrestrial biodiversity. Goal 12 on sustainable consumption and production is also very relevant to the Strategic Plan.
Language referring to biodiversity and ecosystems and/or natural resources is also included in many other goals, including Goal 2 on food security, Goal 6 on water and sanitation, and Goal 11 on cities and human settlements. Other goals which include “sustainability” considerations are also of relevance, as is Goal 17 on means of implementation.
The language in the chapeau underscores that conservation, sustainable use and equitable sharing of benefits are at the heart of the sustainable development process. Paragraph 3 states: “Poverty eradication, changing unsustainable and promoting sustainable patterns of consumption and production and protecting and managing the natural resource base of economic and social development are the overarching objectives of and essential requirements for sustainable development.”
One of the most important achievements is the inclusion in Goal 15 of target 15.9 “by 2020, integrate ecosystems and biodiversity values into national and local planning, development processes and poverty reduction strategies, and accounts.” This target is key as it makes a strong linkage between biodiversity, sustainable development and poverty eradication.
The co-chairs of the Open Working Group – Ambassador Csaba Kőrösi of Hungary and Ambassador Macharia Kamau of Kenya – will forward the text of 17 goals and 169 targets as a report to the General Assembly. This outcome will form an important part of the Secretary General’s “synthesis report” on SDGs and the post-2015 agenda, which will lay out the final steps for completing the post-2015 package in 2015, bringing together different processes that have been ongoing: one on SDGs, one on the post-2015 agenda, and one that includes the Intergovernmental Committee of Experts on Sustainable Development Financing, supported by the Working Group on Financing for Sustainable Development.
“The co-chairs need to be congratulated for their tireless efforts and their deft ability to guide the discussions over the last months” said Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias. “Thanks to their work and skill, the world is engaged in one coordinated conversation on one of the most important outcomes of the Rio+20 conference.”
These results are directly relevant to the theme of the upcoming twelfth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP-12) and it’s High Level Segment – Biodiversity for Sustainable Development, and point to the growing recognition outside of the traditional biodiversity community of the essential role of biodiversity to achieving sustainable development.
When Parties to the CBD meet in Pyeongchang, COP-12 and the High Level Segment will provide opportunities to further reinforce and integrate the agenda of the CBD with that of the post-2015 process and of SDGs. It is expected that a number of COP-12 decisions, related to oceans, forests, biodiversity for development and others, as well as the many parallel meetings and side events will have the potential to contribute to advancing and implementing the goals and targets proposed under the SDG process. The Pyeongchang Roadmap, an anticipated result from COP-12, will also be important to ensuring that the biodiversity and the post-2015 agendas are more closely linked. The declaration of the High Level Segment is also expected to be transmitted to the United Nations General Assembly, and provide additional elements to the discussions on the post-2015 process and the SDGs.
To highlight the essential role of biodiversity for sustainable development, the Secretariat has chosen to celebrate the International Day for Biological Diversity on 22 May 2015 under the theme of “Biodiversity for Sustainable Development.”
The CBD opened for signature at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and entered into force in December 1993. It is an international treaty for the conservation of biodiversity, the sustainable use of the components of biodiversity and the equitable sharing of the benefits derived from the use of genetic resources. With 194 Parties up to now, the Convention has near universal participation among countries.
The CBD seeks to address all threats to biodiversity and ecosystem services, including threats from climate change, through scientific assessments, the development of tools, incentives and processes, the transfer of technologies and good practices and the full and active involvement of relevant stakeholders including indigenous and local communities, youth, NGOs, women and the business community.
The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety is a supplementary agreement to the Convention. It seeks to protect biological diversity from the potential risks posed by living modified organisms resulting from modern biotechnology. To date, 166 countries plus the European Union have ratified the Cartagena Protocol. The Secretariat of the Convention and its Cartagena Protocol is located in Montreal, Canada.
The recent article, GM scaremongering in Africa is disarming the fight against poverty, published in the Guardian’s PovertyMatters Blog on 21 July 2014, is a thinly veiled attack on those of us in Africa and elsewhere who are deeply skeptical of the supposed benefits that genetically modified (GM) crops will bring to the continent. Based on a report by London-based think-tank Chatham House, it represents paternalism of the worst kind, advancing the interests of the biotechnology industry behind a barely constructed façade of philanthropy.
Bassey
The report itself, compiled from an ‘expert roundtable’ and interviews with donors, policy-makers, scientists, farmers and NGOs (none of whom are identified), makes several erroneous and contradictory arguments concerning the lack of uptake or impact of GM crops in Africa. Firstly, with breathtaking arrogance, it dismisses the massive groundswell of opposition to GM crops emerging across the globe (including here in Africa) as a European-led phenomenon. It further credits lack of uptake to a concerted campaign of ‘misinformation’ by opponents of GM crops and onerous biosafety regulation, resulting in negative political judgments and a ‘treadmill of continuous field trials’.
To take each in turn, perhaps the report’s authors were simply unaware of global opposition to GM crops, or missed the recent Malawian civil society response to Monsanto’s application to commercialise Bt cotton on the country? Or dismissed the recent mass community protestors in Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda as merely puppets of European NGOs? That Mexico, the centre of origin of maize, has banned the cultivation of GM maize within its borders was similarly overlooked, as was Peru’s 10-year moratorium on GM crops, enacted in 2012. In 2013 India’s Supreme Court declared an indefinite moratorium on all GM food crops, citing major gaps in the country’s regulatory system, while protests led by farmer groups in the Philippines have curtailed field trials of GM Brinjal (aubergine).
Belay
Even in the United States public opposition to GM crops has been growing for some time. Over 500,000 people have written to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calling for the rejection of Dow Chemical’s application for several GM crops tolerant to 2,4-D based herbicides. Unperturbed by the prospect of legal action from the biotechnology industry, several States are pressing ahead with laws for the labeling of GM food.
To argue that onerous laws and political expediency has created a situation of ‘continual field trials’, as the Chatham House report does, misunderstands or misrepresents several key issues at play. For example, the report cites ‘stringent’ liability laws across the continent as major hindrance to the research process.
Moreover, the vast majority of GM crops grown worldwide are either tolerant to the application of herbicides, produce their own pesticides (Bt crops) or are a combination of the two. There is good reason that the ‘pipeline’ of new GM crops and traits, such as drought tolerant or nutritionally enhanced African ‘orphan’ crops, has not materialized; they are all profoundly more complex process than what has so far been commercialized. The fabled ‘Golden Rice’ (engineered with extra vitamin A) has been in development since the early 1990s. While this has been going on, the government of the Philippines (one the target countries) has been remarkably successful in lowering vitamin A deficiency using cheap, low-tech solutions.
And here we get to the crux of the matter as citizens of Africa and the global south. The obsession in promoting GM crops in Africa, exemplified in this instance by the new Chatham House report, diverts attention and resources away from a plurality of genuine and localized solutions and flies in the face of the recommendations of independent science.
Mayet
The landmark IAASTD report of 2008 (resulting from the input of over 400 global scientific and agricultural experts) was highly dismissive of the potential of GM crops to benefit the world’s poorest and most marginalized communities, and called for a shift towards agro-ecological practices. These sentiments have since been echoed by numerous individuals and organisations, from the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food to the United Nation’s Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report of 2013, titled ‘wake up before it is too late’.
Research by the ETC group has shown that small-holder farmers produce 75% of the world’s food, but only use about 25% of the world’s agricultural resources. The industrial agriculture chain only produces about 25% of the world’s food but uses 75% of the planet’s agricultural resources. Imagine the gains that could be made if even a fraction of the resources propping up the industrial food system were channeled into alternative systems.
Africans reject GMOs because the technology has not delivered on any of its promises and poses significant long-term threats to our environment and peoples. Though the issue of risk is given little attention in the report, lest we forget that in late 2013 nearly 300 scientists and legal experts from around the world signed a statement affirming that there is “no scientific consensus on GMO safety”. That GM’s proponents can claim to the contrary merely reflects the undue influence the biotechnology industry has on the scientific process.
Further, are the philanthropists who are supporting GM development and pressuring Africa to open up also heavy investors in the biotech sector? For example, the relationship between Monsanto and the Gates Foundation is well documented. Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta are all heavily involved in the G8 New Alliance on Food Security and Nutrition, the sharp end of the Green Revolution push in Africa. No matter how much these forces maneuver to seem altruistic rather than predatory, the smoking gun always seems to be visible. The combined forces of Big Agribusiness and Big Philanthropy have been so effective at pressuring our governments that some of them see biosafety laws as mere instruments to opening up our nations to the biotech industry and their local surrogates.
The bottom line is that this is a fight for food sovereignty – for the rights of people to grow food that suits their environment, protects their biodiversity and serves their ability to eat foods that are wholesome and culturally acceptable. Policies must support systems of agriculture and food production that does not distort or damage local economies.
We must not blindly or willfully promote policies that build neocolonial structures that lock in poverty by upturning tested local agricultural knowledge, promoting land grabs through large-scale industrial farming and create dependency on artificial seeds and chemicals. True food security can only be assured by food sovereignty.
By Nnimmo Bassey (Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation), Million Belay (Coordinator, African Food Sovereignty Alliance) and Mariam Mayet (Director, Africa Centre for Biosafety
Okun Alfa in Eti Osa Local Government Area of Lagos lives on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. And it’s not just lulling beach waves, sand and sun. Its residents count their losses every time the waves come crashing into their lives – on one too many occasions. Nurudeen Oyewole has been there to see the fury of nature unleashed.
“We know the ocean surge is capable of submerging this community,” said Sheriff Elegushi, councillor for Okun Alfa community in Eti-Osa Local Government Area of Lagos State. He’s passionate about an impending ocean surge that could unleash disaster on Okun Alfa in Lekki area of the state.
“We know it is capable of sweeping us away. When that would be is what we don’t know. We are helpless about it.”
A flooded street at the Okun Alfa community
Counting the cost of an unfriendly ocean
Elegushi’s entreaties fit the harrowing lamentation of a community in distress. Young and old, men and women, wear long forlorn looks: their existence has been threatened on many occasions, their livelihood shattered.
Yet they hold on to tenuous hope of a better tomorrow even as their unfriendly neighbour, the Atlantic Ocean, brimming with fury, inches closer every second.
Once a leisure resort, Okun Alfa, otherwise known as Alpha Beach community, sits prettily close to the Atlantic. It is one of many coastline communities that had once reaped bountifully from the tourism potential of Lagos beaches but are now under ferocious attack from incessant ocean surges, thanks to climate change and rising sea levels.
The latest in a series of surges was midnight of May 30. The surge, more intense than others before, grounded activities in the community for seven day.
Homes were flooded, shops were washed away, electricity poles and cables were torn down. The community’s lone tarred road was under water.
The nerve centre of its economy – the water front of Alpha Beach – still is plastered with gaunt reminders of the havoc wreaked by that surge. Bars, relaxation spots, big hotels and small chalets thronged by tourists and funseekers were torn to shreds.
“Our children couldn’t go to school because most of the schools had been flooded. Our people couldn’t access healthcare services because the only functioning public health centre was actually ransacked by the rampaging surge. Our Baale’s (traditional ruler) palace was submerged half-way; it took the efforts of the youths and some of us to clear the palace of water and put in place guiding bricks,” said Elegushi.
“Houses were submerged to the extent that clothes, mattresses and many household utensils were floating here and there,” he added.
“The surge started late in the midnight, so our people were rudely awakened from their sleep. They had nowhere to go, so they were forced to stand on their feet. Even while standing, some were submerged up to their waist. Some of our parked vehicles were also submerged. I am a victim in that regard. My car is still with the mechanic as we speak,” Elegushi remembered.
Yet the ocean surge has been on for ages
Okun Alfa has a long history of ocean surges. Its current location is its fourth settlement site, community elders said. Over generations, they have been chased out and forced to relocate by surging Atlantic waves three times already.
“Our forefathers told us that the surges had always pushed them back at one point or the other. However, it was easy for them then because there was enough unoccupied land they could easily shift to. But there is not anymore available land around here for us to occupy now and that makes our case pathetic,” a local Chief, Nasirudeen Adisa, said.
“The last surge swept away my 16-room apartment. Apart from the fact that I lost my place of abode, my tenants on whose rents I lived, have all gone. I’m now a squatter at the Baale’s palace.”
Ironically, the ocean surge that crippled Okun Alfa and its neighbourhood came about 48 hours before the state government could press the panic button on a likely ocean surge. And when it did, it was the usual advisory note.
“We have been told that the rising sea level of the Atlantic Ocean might lead to ocean surge in some part of Ibeju Lekki and other coastline areas of Lagos,” Femi Oke-Osanyintolu, General Manager, Lagos State Emergency Management Agency (LASEMA), said in a statement.
“The imminent surge is the attendant impact of climate change as experienced by different regions across the globe… We advise our people to temporarily move to a safer region until the surge subsides so as to prevent needless loss of lives.”
Though residents of Okun Alfa confirmed that officials of LASEMA indeed came to assess the level of damage done to the community after the surge, no palliative measures, they said, have since been rendered.
Of course, that wasn’t the first time palliative measures will hang in the balance. Sometime in January, 2014, the state government had similarly promised to use the sum of N12.5 billion in the 2014 fiscal year to combat the menace of ocean surge in Okun Alfa and similar coastal areas, yet not a few are asking where the fund has so far been channelled with less than six months to the end of the year.
“Our land is our land”
The surge claimed no life while the harrowing experience lasted. But people who once occupied the shanties at Kuramo coastline of Victoria Island were not that lucky. A similar midnight surge ravaged the area two years ago, killing 16 people. In response, the government chased surviving slum dwellers out of the area. Repeating the same reaction might prove difficult at Okun Alfa, where many lay strong claims to ancestral root and lineage.
“We aren’t living in shanties. We didn’t just hijack the place and settle there. This is an established community. We have our history here. Our ancestral lineage, our root,” said Nureni Sanni, chairman of the community’s development association.
The argument is one of many that have set residents on collision course with the state government. While the government keeps preaching the gospel of resettlement, the residents say government should speed up completion of a 7km-long embankment which it started about two years ago around Goshen estate.
The estate, like Okun Alfa community, is on the coast. Perennial ocean surges into the estate had prompted the state government to kick-start the construction of an embankment, expected to reach Okun Alfa as well as Okun Ajah, among other communities.
“If you claim somewhere is your ancestral home and those ancestral homes keep disappearing every day, will you just stay there?” argued Adesegun Oniru, Lagos State commissioner for waterfront infrastructure.
“Won’t you try to move? Will you wait till you are consumed by the water? Eventually, the protection will come and then you can return to your place. But in the meantime, if there is need for you to move pending the time the protection gets there, won’t you just do that?
“I think that is the right thing to do for anybody with [a] right thinking mind. I really don’t think our people are that naïve when you know that this Atlantic, which you have no control of, is coming to consume you.”
On the worries that the project has only be moving at snail’s speed, raising serious doubt as to its early completion before the current administration bows out of office in May 2015, Oniru said the programme has actually been proceeding as expected and whatever was being observed as delay was a bid to get quality job done.
“That work is being programmed and the contractor executing the work is not behind schedule. If you really take out time to visit the place, you will see the amount of “x-blocks” that break the waves that are being put in place. This is not something that can be rushed. It takes a number of days to get those rocks from Ogun and Oyo states. So, we are keeping the contractor to time,” Oniru said.
Accusing fingers being pointed at government project: Eko Atlantic City?
In its 2009 report on the State of the World Cities, the United Nations Human Settlement Programme – otherwise known as UN-Habitat – identified Lagos as among cities around the world where 13 per cent of urban population is concentrated on the coastline.
Currently, about a million people live and work in Victoria Island, Lekki Peninsula and other parts of Eti-Osa Local Government. The peninsula itself was carved out from a masterplan for Lekki, and divided into five zones: the Lekki Free Trade, Lagos Lagoon, South Urban, Atlantic and Coastal. All the regions, with their glitz and glamour, are designed to lure and shelter about five million people in the nearest future. The first noticeable step in that direction was the commencement of the state’s government dream project: Eko Atlantic City.
Ocean surges and their attendant flooding are natural phenomena over which man has no control. This is more so at a time of widely acclaimed global warming and increased rainfall, both causing more serious flooding in many parts of the world. Flooding is also, undoubtedly, worsened by disruptions of the ecosystem. In Lagos, the view has been expressed that widespread land reclamation, including reclamation for the Eko Atlantic City, that will host 250 families, is responsible for increasing flooding in the state.
The Eko Atlantic City is expected to take up 1, 037.763 hectares of land, records from the state ministry of waterfront show. And as at March 2014, a total of 5,000,000 square metres have been reclaimed while 33, 085, 877 cubic metres of sand was said to have been pumped in.
At the turn of that milestone in February 2013, the state government invited President Goodluck Jonathan and former US President Bill Clinton for a ground-breaking event. Clinton Global Initiative sometime in 2008/2009 gave an eco-friendly award to Lagos in acknowledgement of that initiative.
But even with the promised eldorado, not everybody is keying into the dream of Eko Atlantic City. For some environmentalists and rights activists, even though surges that communities such as Okun Alfa suffer from can be attributed to the effect of climate change and global warming, there are evidence that intensity of those surges have actually increased with the massive dredging of the ocean by the state government.
“The arithmetic here is simple. When you dredge sand from a spot in the ocean, you have created a sort of hole and expanded its frontiers,” explained Niyi Samade, an environmentalist and rights activist.
“The water wave, previously being inhibited by the sand is let loose. And the more you dredge to say you want to go and sand-fill or reclaim a particular portion, the more water you let loose from the excavation site. So it is a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. This, coupled with the ferocious effect of global warming, the resultant effect is disastrous ocean surges. So for us, the Eko Atlantic City is a time bomb,” he said.
Prof. Larry Awosika, head of geophysics department, Nigeria Institute of Oceanography and Marine Research (NIOMR), disclosed in one of his studies, that the Victoria Island is the fastest eroding beach in Nigeria, losing about 30 metres to the ocean annually. Ugborodo/Escravos loses around 24 metres yearly. And, by the end of the century, he said, Lekki and the Victoria Island would have lost 602 and 584 square kilometers respectively.
The predictions and recent discoveries might make some Nigerians likely to scream about the future of Lekki/Victoria Island communities and the proposed Atlantic City. Among the discoveries by geologists is a major crack in the Cameroonian faultline, which runs through the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, extending from Cameroon, through a number of islands, to Lake Chad.
The other is another fracture said to have been discovered at Ifewara-Zungeru and which has since been traced to the nexus of faultlines engraved at the bottom of the Atlantic.
Samade argued that the state government and its partner construction company, South Energy X, perhaps could have discovered some of the “inconsistencies as well as dangers” inherent in the Atlantic City project if thorough Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) had been carried out when the project was being conceived.
“We aren’t at fault”
However, the state is pooh-poohing some of these hypotheses. The waterfront infrastructure commissioner insisted there were EIAs being constantly done as the project goes through different stages of reclamation.
“To carry out a project as big as the Eko Atlantic City, there are constant EIAs being carried out. As the project passes through different stages of reclamation, different stages of construction, you must be carrying out EIAs, be it positive or negative. It must also be noted that the city is being tested internationally to show that it does not have any negative impact on the vicinity or the environment where it is being created,” Oniru said.
On the allegation that the construction of the Atlantic City is worsening the challenge of coastal erosion in the area, the commissioner disagreed, saying, if anything, the project has only succeeded in reclaiming portions of land lost to the Atlantic. He added that the sand being used to reclaim those portions of land is being dredged some 15 to 20 km right into the Atlantic. He was however quick to accept that there are challenges especially in the flow of water on the eastern side of the Eko Atlantic City.
“On the other side of Takwa Bay which is called the Light House, you will see land and sand being accrued in that area because of the sand that is coming from the Bight of Benin. On the other side, where Eko Atlantic City is, which used to be known as Bar beach, the sand is not being allowed to go over. This has to do with the two moles, particularly the east mole. The problem is from the east mole. Everything eastward of the Eko Atlantic City is what we are facing as a challenge now. And the length of that to the boundary of Lagos state is about 85 to 87 kilometers of coastline. That we still need to work on and protect,” Oniru said.
Yet, respite not in sight
On government’s plans to supply relief materials to residents of Okun Alfa, Oniru said the only thing he had knowledge of was the construction of the embankment, which is expected to protect the community alongside others on the coastline. “That is what we know and that is what we are working on,” he said.
With that tone of finality, residents of Okun Alfa may have to wait much longer to have the much desired respite from their government.
The Okun Alfa community, which hosts the once-popular Alpha Beach in Lekki area of Eti-Osa Local Government in Lagos, has in numerous occasions been besieged by the nearby Atlantic Ocean, losing its attraction to settlers and fun seekers.
Ongoing drainage construction
Council chairman, Anofiu Elegushi, attributes the tragedy to the combined effects of ocean surge, lack of drainage facility, poor urban planning and, most of all, the aftermath of the erection of a fence Chevron Nigeria Limited, which operates close-by. According to him, whenever there is a surge or excessive rainfall which results in flooding, the water gets trapped within the community without anywhere to flow out to, damaging properties and valuables worth millions. He laments that the perimeter fencing traps the flood water within the community.
He says: “Some years ago after Chevron acquired some land within our community and started constructing their fence, they made use of our only access road and heavy duty trucks plied the road. After the construction of the fence, they abandoned our road which is now in a bad state and constructed a new road to be used by them only. Also their fence is higher than the community, so whenever it rains Okun Alfa is at the receiving end. They are not concerned about the suffering they have put us into but are satisfied with their great wall fenced against the community. No iota of care about the host community.”
Efforts to speak to officials of Chevron over Elegushi’s allegation proved abortive.
However, another school of thought insists that the increasing level of surge experienced in the community has been necessitated by the ongoing Eko Atlantic City project by the Lagos State Government in the past five years. The new city is expected to accommodate 250,000 residents after completion.
A Professor of environmental law with the Nigeria Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and also Executive Director of the Environment Law Research Institute (ELRI), Lanre Fagbohun, has decried the manner of conception of the project, saying that before a project of such magnitude would have been proposed and earmarked for commencement, an environment impact assessment (EIA) should have been prepared and the report made available to the public. But, according to him, the EIA of the project was made available years after its commencement.
“An EIA is not a condemnation of a project but an assessment of the environmental consequences which could be good or bad, and how communities and institutions would prepare to accept and adapt to such a project. But this was not the case with the Eko Atlantic City project,” he stresses.
Elegushi has however refused to completely blame the Eko Atlantic City project as the main cause of the impasse because, according to him, community’s present location is its fourth point of settlement due to past surges. He believes that the solution to the surge is the construction of an embankment by the beach side to break the power of the ocean tide and a sustainable drainage system that would channel excess water outward from the community.
Lagos State commissioner for the environment, Tunji Bello, says the state government is working on constructing a drainage channel that would connect with a nearby drainage in the area and flow out through the Lagos Lagoon. Initially slow, but work on the drainage appears to have picked up.
Destroyed community health centre
The residents by the beach do not have electricity because the poles have been washed away, the community health centre has been destroyed by the ocean, while the access road to the community from the expressway is in a deplorable state and is always flooded. Indeed, business activities around the beach is a ghost of its former self.
While the drainage construction is ongoing, residents and community leaders want Chevron to play a key role in making life more meaningful for them.
According to the Head of the Department of Meteorology at FUT Akure, Dr Ahmed Balogun, the idea behind the project is to develop a dense network of hydro-meteorological monitoring stations in sub-Saharan Africa: one every 30 km, which entails the installation of 20,000 such stations.
