Local weather initiatives Tinubu ought to prioritise

When my phone rang on October 17, 2022, and saw that my friend, Patrick, was the one calling me, I knew something was rotten in the State of Denmark. I should say right off the bat that Patrick is a good conversationalist who likes to engage me on global politics, energy and social policies. But we lock horns over certain policy fronts. I’m high in trade openness while Patrick is low. He’s a firm proponent of mainstream economics; I’m more inclined to the Austrian School of Economics. Due to some of these stark ideological contrasts, our discussions are for the most time long drawn out.

Anyway, Patrick had called to hear my perspective on the comment President Bola Tinubu, (then the 2023 presidential candidate for the All Progressives Congress) had made during the Arewa Joint Committee Interactive Session. Climate change, Tinubu had stated, “is a question of how do you prevent a church rat from eating a poisoned holy communion. We are a poor nation, they banned coal, we follow, they say firewood, they say we need to plant more trees. We need to open our eyes, shine them and tell the West if you don’t guarantee our finances and work with us to stop this, we are not going to comply with your climate change.”

Those words by Tinubu opened up a Pandora’s Box of indignation from advocates of climate actions, with many disavowing his metaphor which suggested a threat to the West. They thought diplomacy should have characterised his response. Again, Tinubu incurred their wrath when he failed to attend the first African Climate Summit that was held in September 2023 in Kenya. This time around, merchants of green advocates have ample reason to categorise him as a climate science denier. In their estimation, Nigeria, the most populous and biggest economy in Africa, should be seen to provide the much-needed leadership for Africa on many fronts: climate action inclusive.

Right before the 28th Conference of the Parties began, the statement of Sultan Al Jaber, COP-28 President, about the lack of science justifying that a phase-out of fossil fuels is imperative to restrict global heating to 1.5C rent many media platforms. Al Jaber’s other words that phasing out fossil fuels would impair sustainable development and take the “world back into caves” met strong rebuttals from top climate scientists who called his comments “incredibly concerning” and “verging on climate denial.”

Anyway, Patrick and I spoke again after COP28 ended. His mention of a record-high 95,000 participants that graced the summit made me break into a guffaw. A summit whose raison d’être is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but adds more into the atmosphere ought not to be taken seriously, especially when the clamour for a carbon passport has re-emerged.

Anti-fossil fuels protagonists became despondent with the COP28 outcome when ‘phase-out’ of oil, coal and gas was replaced with the subtle phrase ‘transitioning away from fossil fuels.’ Some acclaimed ‘gains’ of the conference, such as the pledge of millions of dollars for the loss and damage fund to support climate-vulnerable developing countries; $3.5bn commitment to replenish the resources of the Green Climate Fund; provision of over $150m for the Least Developed Countries Fund and Special Climate Change Fund; and an increase of $9bn annually by the World Bank to finance climate-related projects (2024 and 2025), all sound fiercely ambitious and fantastical. They should, at best, be taken with a pinch of salt, especially by developing and least developed economies in need of climate finance. The reason is pretty simple; past commitments, including the annual promised $100bn fund by developed countries, starting from 2020, to vulnerable states impacted by severe climate-linked impacts and disasters have yet to be met.

Given the severity of the current situation in Nigeria, most economists will favour workable industrial policies over costly climate policies. One of the reasons is that industrial policies specifically target structural changes which Nigeria is currently in dire need of. Two, they can help stimulate economic growth. Examples abound where industrial policies have achieved monumental feats (export promotion and industrial diversification policies in South Korea and China). Three, the benefits of well-implemented industrial policies are tangible (boost in employment opportunities, increased current account surplus, rise in revenue, GDP, etc) as opposed to climate-mitigation policies which can be erased with the effects of natural climate variability. Four, when industrial policies are formulated and executed based on detailed information, iteration and learning, the bang could be maximised for the buck.

Notwithstanding, one of the climate projects Tinubu should prioritise is the Ogoni clean-up. The President Olusegun Obasanjo administration, in 2006, had inaugurated the United Nations Environmental Programme to assess the level of pollution and contamination in the Ogoni region. Before then, the community’s inhabitants had embarked on a series of protests against the environmental impacts of oil pollution on the community.

The UNEP study revealed the contamination of soil in Ogoni; discovered high benzene concentration (benzene contamination was said to be over 900 times above the World Health Organisation’s guideline in one town, Ogale, in the Eleme Local Government Area) both in the outdoor air and drinking water in the area. Fish and aquatic life, according to the report, were disappearing and wetlands facing disintegration. Most members of the current Ogoniland community, assumed the report, “have lived with chronic oil pollution throughout their lives.”

It’s quite disheartening that much has yet to be done in the Ogoni community since UNEP released its independent assessment in August 2011. Surprisingly, all that the administration of Goodluck Jonathan (a son of the Niger Delta) did about the report was to create the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project in 2012, the agency in charge of coordinating the clean-up. The Buhari era, albeit, restructured HYPREP and set up the agency board, didn’t also show much political will in the report implementation. In summary, the actions of the two administrations preceding Tinubu on the Ogoni clean-up were at a snail’s pace. Even though the United Nations Environment in 2018 began a new project to strengthen HYPREP and its governing council to better discharge their responsibilities in the clean-up of oil contamination in Ogoniland, serious allegations of corruption, false claims, and shoddy and incomplete works continue to be levelled against HYREP and the companies involved in the first phase of remediation.

Tinubu needs to expedite action in cleaning up the community where oil exploration and production began in the 1950s. Based on reports, the drag on the clean-up has dampened people’s confidence; the hope of many has considerably waned. The President needs to gain the trust of the Ogoni people that the “clean-up is anything but a scam.” He must show conscientiousness, and political will in widely implementing the UNEP recommendations and repositioning HYPREP for transparency and efficiency in operation. The Federal Government under his watch should also pay its counterpart fund to the Ogoni Trust Fund, and not pass the buck to the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited.

Another project worth giving precedence over other climate projects is the construction of the Dasin Hausa Dam in the Fufore Local Government Area of Adamawa State. According to the agreement signed in 1977 between Nigeria and Cameroon, Nigeria was supposed to construct a buffer dam (Dasin Hausa Dam) to contain the water released from Cameroon’s Lagdo Dam which was completed in 1982. The failure of the Nigerian government to construct the dam more than 45 years after the reached agreement, has continued to intensify the impact of flooding of the Benue estuary and the Lokoja confluence area.

The release of water from the Lagdo Dam in September 2022 flowed down the Benue River, flooding communities in the North-East. A post-disaster assessment on the 2022 flooding, estimated “that the total direct economic damages, based on currently reported statistics as of November 25, 2022, are in the range of $3.79bn to $9.12bn, with the best (median) estimate at $6.68bn. This includes damages to residential and non-residential buildings (including building contents), as well as damages to infrastructure, productive sectors and to cropland.” The number of persons affected was estimated to be above 4.9 million with significant damage to infrastructure, including roads, irrigation and river, as well as electricity projects.

Also in 2012, the excess water released from the Lagdo Dam caused the flood that ravaged many parts of Adamawa State. Not less than 89 schools in the state were severely flooded, with media reports of the death of 15 persons. It also had a devastating impact in Kano State, resulting in the death of 15 persons and flooding nine local government areas in the state, according to the Kano State Rehabilitation and Emergency Relief Agency. The impact of the 2012 flooding was very high in terms of human, material, and production loss, with 363 persons killed, 5,851 injured, 3,891,314 affected, and 3,871,53 displaced, reports the Nigeria Post-Disaster Needs Assessment 2012 Floods.

Canvassing for the construction of the Dasin Hausa Dam, a senator representing Adamawa South, Binos Yaroe, warned that “the frequency and intensity of hydrological hazards such as flood as being experienced annually from unregulated releases most especially from Lagdo Dam will continue to cause various forms of catastrophic outcomes unless a lasting solution is implemented.” In September 2023, the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency announced the completion of the study and design of the Dasin Hausa Dam. Expected to generate 300 megawatts of electricity and irrigate about 150,000 hectares of land in Adamawa, Taraba, and Benue states, the dam when completed is projected to reduce the incidence of flooding in the North-East region by a substantial margin, and permanently solve the annual flooding of River Benue. Tinubu should therefore see to the speedy commencement of the project given its primacy to curb disasters of colossal magnitude.

Since it’s impossible to do everything, it’s a no-brainer to pursue projects that accelerate progress, reduce suffering, and save lives. Therefore, it’s compelling to prioritise these two projects, avoid white elephants, and promote the best policies for implementation.