Cover

Basil Oru, a migrant farmer in Igbe, Ikorodu in Lagos, frowns at the rising temperatures, along with the irregular rainfall pattern he claims is affecting farm yield and threatening his source of livelihood. He complains that, just as it has been the trend in recent years, the rain is late in coming and thus delaying the planting of certain crops ...

Due to the untidy and environmentally-unfriendly nature of mechanic villages – they are said to arbitrarily dispose discarded auto parts and waste oil – the authorities feel they deface the cityscape. But the idea of gathering automobile servicing technicians at specified locations has considerably contributed to the eradication of roadside practice. In the 1980s, Oladipo Diya, then Governor of Ogun ...

Oloibiri is a small community in Ogbia Local Government Area in Bayelsa State, in the eastern Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Oloibiri is a historic town to the oil and gas industry as the first commercial oil discovery was made there (at Otuabagi/Otuogadi) by Shell Darcy on Sunday, January 15th, 1956 after about 50 years of exploration. Indeed, Oloibiri has many firsts to its credit in the ...

African delegates at the World Social Forum held recently in Tunisia have taken an historic decision to launch the “No REDD in Africa Network” and join the global movement against REDD. REDD, an acronym for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, has been blamed for the rampant land grabs and neocolonialism in Africa. According to the participants, REDD+ is a carbon ...

When Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, Vladmir Putin of Russia, Manmohan Singh of India, Xi Jinping of China and Jacob Zuma of South Africa met recently under the aegis of BRICS in the South African coastal city of Durban, the leaders explored the creation of a development bank, in follow up from the previous summit. The last summit was the fifth ...

Erstwhile Executive Director of the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), Nnimmo Bassey, has said that the secret of the organisation’s success over the past two decades of its existence lies in the fact that it viewed every scene of environmental harm as a crime scene. He noted on Tuesday in Abuja in a presentation to commemorate 20 ...

The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day celebration, “A promise is a promise: Time for action to end violence against women,” signals the urgency to take concrete actions to monitor and address the drivers of violence against women and girls in Nigeria. Apart from HIV/AIDS and social cultural norms that tend to permit violent behavior, the devastating impact of ...

The issue As we approach the rainy season, the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET) has warned of possible heavy rainfall this year. Last year NIMET also warned, but this seemed not heeded. The cost in terms of human and materials losses were very severe, and we are still studying to understand the dimensions of the loses in  health, housing and infrastructure, ...

The Lagos State Government is to spend a whopping N27 billion to protect choice properties lined along its restive Atlantic Ocean shoreline from Oniru Estate to Alpha Beach area within the next three years. Over the years, extensive ocean surge and coastal erosion have collaborated to wash away acres of coastal land, threatening the array of real estate and tourism/hospitality ...

A fabrication by a roadside technician who fixes cars and motorcycles’ electric fittings may very well be the solution to an enduring use of generators in Nigeria. The country is riddled with generators usage from homesteads to business offices, shops and even government offices. This is not without certain clear and present dangers especially as it regards human health, the ...