In the last couple of days, I have been so close to people who lost their loved ones in the course of childbirth. The first was a friend’s cousin who went into comma after childbirth at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH). She died a month later, leaving behind husband and children, among other family members. The other person was ...

The Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) has described a Dutch court ruling today which held Shell liable for the pollution of fish ponds and farmlands in Ikot Ada Udo community in Akwa Ibom as a major watershed in the quest for environmental justice in the Niger Delta. The group disclosed In a statement issued in Lagos that while it ...

Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), who recently took a look at the current National Biosafety Agency (Establishment) Bill of 2010, have warned that the Nigerian government did not take into account the concerns of local farmers, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and critical stakeholders in its formulation. The bill is presently awaiting the President’s consent. At a forum held recently in Benin City, ...

Living in Kpeyegyi community, one of the several satellite communities of Abuja, is really challenging. The community is not only close to the nation’s seat of power but lack so much – they have no good roads, potable water, health facilities and good transport system. Majority of them live in accommodation not befitting the status of people associated with a Federal ...

Against the backdrop of the Equator Prize bestowed on it by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Ekuri Initiative has lamented that the efforts of the community are not locally acknowledged despite its international recognition. Edwin Ogar, who heads the project, disclosed that, consequently, the community is in dire need and mired in poverty. His words: “In Nigeria, the ...

Nigeria needs an environmental agenda to enable it grow sustainably. President of the Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF), Chief Philip Asiodu, stated this during the 11th Chief S. L. Edu Memorial Lecture held recently in Lagos. According to him, the country is faced with various environmental challenges like forest degradation, marine and fresh water depletion, as well as pressure on available ...

A couple of endeavours aimed at providing sustainable solutions to local people in Nigeria have become a shining light in the annals of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). This is because the programmes – operated by the Smallholders Foundation and Ekuri Initiative – have both been decorated by the UN organisation, albeit in the course of the decade-old history ...

The prospects of two urban centres came under focus recently as human settlement practitioners gathered for the umpteenth time to take stock of the fortunes of cities on the African continent. At the Sixth Edition of “Africities” held several weeks ago in Dakar, the Senegalese capital, local administrators from Burkina Faso and South Africa highlighted challenges facing the cities of ...