Akpabio pledges to help Nigeria secure climate change funds

The Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, has pledged to secure funds from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) to address the losses and damages caused by climate change in Nigeria.

He said the IPU, a global body of parliamentarians, has a budget of $30 billion to fight climate change and that he will use his office as an executive member of the union to secure some funds during the 28th Conference of Parties (COP) in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to address the effects of climate change back home.

Mr Akpabio said this on Thursday during an interactive session with the management of the Nigerian Ecological Office at the senate complex, Abuja.

COP is a global decision-making forum on climate change with about 198 member- countries.

The COP28 will hold in Dubai from 30 November to 12 December.

“I was elected into the executive committee of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. I have found that within that organisation itself, there are budget intervening countries through parliament in ecological matters and climate change is about $30 billion.

“In the session for COP28 in Dubai, we have our own session on climate change. I will let them know that Nigeria is a place they should intervene,” the senate president said.

Damage

Mr Akpabio said part of the damage caused by climate change in Nigeria is flooding that ravaged many parts of the country in recent times.

He said the flooding got worse after the neighbouring Cameroon opened its dam.

“Whenever the dam in Cameroon is opened, it happens on an annual basis, the amount of water that comes normally wipes out a lot of islands including most of the uplands in Bayelsa, those houses will wash away.

“It goes all the way to Ondo, down to Akwa Ibom. Most of the villages do not exist during that period of the raining season and when those dams are being built through renovation of yearly maintenance,” he said.

The senate president lamented the level at which the flood ravaged many parts of the country.

“Most people have to leave their villages for six months, then the other six months they look for a place to hide.

“In Bayelsa, you will be surprised that without war, we have internally displaced persons as a result of climate change. Whatever we can do we will do to assist you to do more” Mr Akpabio said.

Earlier, the Permanent Secretary of Ecological Project Office, Shehu Ibrahim, complained that the funds allocated to the agency to fight climate change is not enough.

Mr Ibrahim said the ecological office receives between N2 to N3 billion on monthly from the federal government to address effects of climate change.

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“The first challenge we have in that office is the public misconception. The conception is that there are so much billions in that office but in reality sir, what we have is very minimal compared to the amount of requests that we have already captured in our data bank.

“As at today, as I have said, we have more than 5,000 requests running into trillions of naira and what we usually get from the monthly due to the office is in the region of between N2 to N3 billion monthly, sir.

“So, that misconception is a really big issue that we have always been trying to handle and this is exacerbated by the fact that we don’t have much collaboration between the states and local governments.

“We have been trying to reach out to the state and local government to see how we can be able to collaborate, so that whatever we have at the federal level, we can be able to match it with what the states and local governments have, but it has been a very big issue,” he said.