The Lagos Urban Development Initiative (LUDI) has announced Daniel Anyanonu, Nicole Rapu and Emmanuel Chiemeka as winners of the 2024 Greening Lagos competition.
Making this announcement on Thursday, November 21, 2024, Miriam Adenuga, Project Coordinator, LUDI, disclosed that the winners in the 16-18 years, 13-15 years and 10-12 years categories proved to be worthy winners during the competition.
Adenuga, who doubles as the Project Lead of Greening Lagos, noted that the competition perfectly fits into Lagos State THEMES Plus Agenda.
She said: “We are quite aware of the fact that the THEMES Plus Agenda really focused on sustainability and inclusivity by trying to push for community initiative and the idea is for communities to own the project and by bringing communities together to solve problems like climate change and make the environment much better that will guarantee community dwellers live a healthier life.”
Speaking further, the Greening Lagos Project Lead hinted that the main reason why Lagos Urban Development Initiative target the children for this project is “as they say, children are the leaders of tomorrow, but we feel, why don’t they start leading now? Why do we have to wait till tomorrow? We are talking about sustainability, the idea is for things to live beyond our generation to the next generation, so it’s very important for us to involve them now, if not they are going to be confused about whatever we are leaving for them, so it’s important for them to be part of what is happening now especially towards initiative like this.”
On why partnering with other organisations, Adenuga noted that “collaborations is very important for us because we cannot do things in silos. There are different people doing the same things in different ways but doing things together can lead to achieving greatness collectively as supported by Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 17.”
In his remarks, Adetayo Okunaiya, representing Lekki Bird Club, opined that Lagos State is built on sustainability and resilience of the city.
“You cannot talk of the resilience of any city without the environment and the city’s ability to feed itself and keep itself healthy. I think projects like this, if massively implemented, have the capacity to increase the health of the environment and improve people’s ability to feed themselves. We have multiple gardens spread across the state, the truth of the matter is that most of us will buy vegetables and all sorts from the market, but from the seeds of these vegetables we can still plant to feed ourselves.
“So, if we are to build a resilient city in Lagos, it all depends on people’s ability to feed themselves and of course improve the quality of life generally in terms of how the environment impacts on them. I’m sure this aligns with us in Lagos and general sustainability agenda for Nigeria,” Okunaiya submitted.
Omoniyi Iyanda, Head, Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting of First City Monument Bank (FCMB), in his submission disclosed: “It is a game changer for all of us partnering Greening Lagos Initiative to come together and fulfill the rich ambition of recreating a better Nigeria from the youth and children that we have chosen to engage in this project. We strongly believe that we can tell a better story with these children and because of their open mind and fearless nature coupled with the potential we have seen in them, we strongly believe that Nigeria can be better in their hands and that is why we are giving them the platform.
“Basically, we decided to partner with facilitator of Greening Lagos competition because partnership and collaboration for Sustainable Development Goals is one of the primary and the most important goal of the SDGs, we all have decided to come together and create a bigger and robust platform in reaching out to the entire nation on why we need to deal with climate change challenges and bring a better nation in our country. So, we have decided to partner with Lagos Urban Development Initiative to fulfill our mandate of building a sustainable Lagos and resilient city that will compete with the western world.”
Highpoint of the event was a panel discussion session involving representatives from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Lagos State Parks and Gardens Agency (LASPARK), Lekki Bird Club, FCMB and Nicole Rapu (Winner of the competition in the 13-15 years category).
Also, there was cheque presentations to winners as well as runners up in all the three categories of the competition.
Greening Lagos is a competition that encourages kids to use their creativity and problem-solving skills to suggest ideas that can help their communities.
By Ajibola Adedoye
