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‘The ocean can consume us, yet we can’t help ourselves’

Michael Simire
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‘The ocean can consume us, yet we can’t help ourselves’

Okun Alfa in Eti Osa Local Government Area of Lagos lives on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. And it’s not just lulling beach waves, sand and sun. Its residents count their losses every time the waves come crashing into their lives – on one too many occasions. Nurudeen Oyewole has been there to see the fury of nature unleashed.

 

“We know the ocean surge is capable of submerging this community,” said Sheriff Elegushi, councillor for Okun Alfa community in Eti-Osa Local Government Area of Lagos State. He’s passionate about an impending ocean surge that could unleash disaster on Okun Alfa in Lekki area of the state.

“We know it is capable of sweeping us away. When that would be is what we don’t know. We are helpless about it.”

 

A flooded street at the Okun Alfa community
A flooded street at the Okun Alfa community

Counting the cost of an unfriendly ocean

Elegushi’s entreaties fit the harrowing lamentation of a community in distress. Young and old, men and women, wear long forlorn looks: their existence has been threatened on many occasions, their livelihood shattered.

Yet they hold on to tenuous hope of a better tomorrow even as their unfriendly neighbour, the Atlantic Ocean, brimming with fury, inches closer every second.

Once a leisure resort, Okun Alfa, otherwise known as Alpha Beach community, sits prettily close to the Atlantic. It is one of many coastline communities that had once reaped bountifully from the tourism potential of Lagos beaches but are now under ferocious attack from incessant ocean surges, thanks to climate change and rising sea levels.

The latest in a series of surges was midnight of May 30. The surge, more intense than others before, grounded activities in the community for seven day.

Homes were flooded, shops were washed away, electricity poles and cables were torn down. The community’s lone tarred road was under water.

The nerve centre of its economy – the water front of Alpha Beach – still is plastered with gaunt reminders of the havoc wreaked by that surge. Bars, relaxation spots, big hotels and small chalets thronged by tourists and funseekers were torn to shreds.

“Our children couldn’t go to school because most of the schools had been flooded. Our people couldn’t access healthcare services because the only functioning public health centre was actually ransacked by the rampaging surge. Our Baale’s (traditional ruler) palace was submerged half-way; it took the efforts of the youths and some of us to clear the palace of water and put in place guiding bricks,” said Elegushi.

“Houses were submerged to the extent that clothes, mattresses and many household utensils were floating here and there,” he added.

“The surge started late in the midnight, so our people were rudely awakened from their sleep. They had nowhere to go, so they were forced to stand on their feet. Even while standing, some were submerged up to their waist. Some of our parked vehicles were also submerged. I am a victim in that regard. My car is still with the mechanic as we speak,” Elegushi remembered.

 

Yet the ocean surge has been on for ages

Okun Alfa has a long history of ocean surges. Its current location is its fourth settlement site, community elders said. Over generations, they have been chased out and forced to relocate by surging Atlantic waves three times already.

“Our forefathers told us that the surges had always pushed them back at one point or the other. However, it was easy for them then because there was enough unoccupied land they could easily shift to. But there is not anymore available land around here for us to occupy now and that makes our case pathetic,” a local Chief, Nasirudeen Adisa, said.

“The last surge swept away my 16-room apartment. Apart from the fact that I lost my place of abode, my tenants on whose rents I lived, have all gone. I’m now a squatter at the Baale’s palace.”

Ironically, the ocean surge that crippled Okun Alfa and its neighbourhood came about 48 hours before the state government could press the panic button on a likely ocean surge. And when it did, it was the usual advisory note.

“We have been told that the rising sea level of the Atlantic Ocean might lead to ocean surge in some part of Ibeju Lekki and other coastline areas of Lagos,” Femi Oke-Osanyintolu, General Manager, Lagos State Emergency Management Agency (LASEMA), said in a statement.

“The imminent surge is the attendant impact of climate change as experienced by different regions across the globe… We advise our people to temporarily move to a safer region until the surge subsides so as to prevent needless loss of lives.”

Though residents of Okun Alfa confirmed that officials of LASEMA indeed came to assess the level of damage done to the community after the surge, no palliative measures, they said, have since been rendered.

Of course, that wasn’t the first time palliative measures will hang in the balance. Sometime in January, 2014, the state government had similarly promised to use the sum of N12.5 billion in the 2014 fiscal year to combat the menace of ocean surge in Okun Alfa and similar coastal areas, yet not a few are asking where the fund has so far been channelled with less than six months to the end of the year.

 

“Our land is our land”

The surge claimed no life while the harrowing experience lasted. But people who once occupied the shanties at Kuramo coastline of Victoria Island were not that lucky. A similar midnight surge ravaged the area two years ago, killing 16 people. In response, the government chased surviving slum dwellers out of the area. Repeating the same reaction might prove difficult at Okun Alfa, where many lay strong claims to ancestral root and lineage.

“We aren’t living in shanties. We didn’t just hijack the place and settle there. This is an established community. We have our history here. Our ancestral lineage, our root,” said Nureni Sanni, chairman of the community’s development association.

The argument is one of many that have set residents on collision course with the state government. While the government keeps preaching the gospel of resettlement, the residents say government should speed up completion of a 7km-long embankment which it started about two years ago around Goshen estate.

The estate, like Okun Alfa community, is on the coast. Perennial ocean surges into the estate had prompted the state government to kick-start the construction of an embankment, expected to reach Okun Alfa as well as Okun Ajah, among other communities.

“If you claim somewhere is your ancestral home and those ancestral homes keep disappearing every day, will you just stay there?” argued Adesegun Oniru, Lagos State commissioner for waterfront infrastructure.

“Won’t you try to move? Will you wait till you are consumed by the water? Eventually, the protection will come and then you can return to your place. But in the meantime, if there is need for you to move pending the time the protection gets there, won’t you just do that?

“I think that is the right thing to do for anybody with [a] right thinking mind. I really don’t think our people are that naïve when you know that this Atlantic, which you have no control of, is coming to consume you.”

On the worries that the project has only be moving at snail’s speed, raising serious doubt as to its early completion before the current administration bows out of office in May 2015, Oniru said the programme has actually been proceeding as expected and whatever was being observed as delay was a bid to get quality job done.

“That work is being programmed and the contractor executing the work is not behind schedule. If you really take out time to visit the place, you will see the amount of “x-blocks” that break the waves that are being put in place. This is not something that can be rushed. It takes a number of days to get those rocks from Ogun and Oyo states. So, we are keeping the contractor to time,” Oniru said.

 

Accusing fingers being pointed at government project: Eko Atlantic City?

In its 2009 report on the State of the World Cities, the United Nations Human Settlement Programme – otherwise known as UN-Habitat – identified Lagos as among cities around the world where 13 per cent of urban population is concentrated on the coastline.

Currently, about a million people live and work in Victoria Island, Lekki Peninsula and other parts of Eti-Osa Local Government. The peninsula itself was carved out from a masterplan for Lekki, and divided into five zones: the Lekki Free Trade, Lagos Lagoon, South Urban, Atlantic and Coastal. All the regions, with their glitz and glamour, are designed to lure and shelter about five million people in the nearest future. The first noticeable step in that direction was the commencement of the state’s government dream project: Eko Atlantic City.

Ocean surges and their attendant flooding are natural phenomena over which man has no control. This is more so at a time of widely acclaimed global warming and increased rainfall, both causing more serious flooding in many parts of the world. Flooding is also, undoubtedly, worsened by disruptions of the ecosystem. In Lagos, the view has been expressed that widespread land reclamation, including reclamation for the Eko Atlantic City, that will host 250 families, is responsible for increasing flooding in the state.

The Eko Atlantic City is expected to take up 1, 037.763 hectares of land, records from the state ministry of waterfront show. And as at March 2014, a total of 5,000,000 square metres have been reclaimed while 33, 085, 877 cubic metres of sand was said to have been pumped in.

At the turn of that milestone in February 2013, the state government invited President Goodluck Jonathan and former US President Bill Clinton for a ground-breaking event. Clinton Global Initiative sometime in 2008/2009 gave an eco-friendly award to Lagos in acknowledgement of that initiative.

But even with the promised eldorado, not everybody is keying into the dream of Eko Atlantic City. For some environmentalists and rights activists, even though surges that communities such as Okun Alfa suffer from can be attributed to the effect of climate change and global warming, there are evidence that intensity of those surges have actually increased with the massive dredging of the ocean by the state government.

“The arithmetic here is simple. When you dredge sand from a spot in the ocean, you have created a sort of hole and expanded its frontiers,” explained Niyi Samade, an environmentalist and rights activist.

“The water wave, previously being inhibited by the sand is let loose. And the more you dredge to say you want to go and sand-fill or reclaim a particular portion, the more water you let loose from the excavation site. So it is a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. This, coupled with the ferocious effect of global warming, the resultant effect is disastrous ocean surges. So for us, the Eko Atlantic City is a time bomb,” he said.

Prof. Larry Awosika, head of geophysics department, Nigeria Institute of Oceanography and Marine Research (NIOMR), disclosed in one of his studies, that the Victoria Island is the fastest eroding beach in Nigeria, losing about 30 metres to the ocean annually. Ugborodo/Escravos loses around 24 metres yearly. And, by the end of the century, he said, Lekki and the Victoria Island would have lost 602 and 584 square kilometers respectively.

The predictions and recent discoveries might make some Nigerians likely to scream about the future of Lekki/Victoria Island communities and the proposed Atlantic City. Among the discoveries by geologists is a major crack in the Cameroonian faultline, which runs through the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, extending from Cameroon, through a number of islands, to Lake Chad.

The other is another fracture said to have been discovered at Ifewara-Zungeru and which has since been traced to the nexus of faultlines engraved at the bottom of the Atlantic.

Samade argued that the state government and its partner construction company, South Energy X, perhaps could have discovered some of the “inconsistencies as well as dangers” inherent in the Atlantic City project if thorough Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) had been carried out when the project was being conceived.

 

“We aren’t at fault”

However, the state is pooh-poohing some of these hypotheses. The waterfront infrastructure commissioner insisted there were EIAs being constantly done as the project goes through different stages of reclamation.

“To carry out a project as big as the Eko Atlantic City, there are constant EIAs being carried out. As the project passes through different stages of reclamation, different stages of construction, you must be carrying out EIAs, be it positive or negative. It must also be noted that the city is being tested internationally to show that it does not have any negative impact on the vicinity or the environment where it is being created,” Oniru said.

On the allegation that the construction of the Atlantic City is worsening the challenge of coastal erosion in the area, the commissioner disagreed, saying, if anything, the project has only succeeded in reclaiming portions of land lost to the Atlantic. He added that the sand being used to reclaim those portions of land is being dredged some 15 to 20 km right into the Atlantic. He was however quick to accept that there are challenges especially in the flow of water on the eastern side of the Eko Atlantic City.

“On the other side of Takwa Bay which is called the Light House, you will see land and sand being accrued in that area because of the sand that is coming from the Bight of Benin. On the other side, where Eko Atlantic City is, which used to be known as Bar beach, the sand is not being allowed to go over. This has to do with the two moles, particularly the east mole. The problem is from the east mole. Everything eastward of the Eko Atlantic City is what we are facing as a challenge now. And the length of that to the boundary of Lagos state is about 85 to 87 kilometers of coastline. That we still need to work on and protect,” Oniru said.

 

Yet, respite not in sight

On government’s plans to supply relief materials to residents of Okun Alfa, Oniru said the only thing he had knowledge of was the construction of the embankment, which is expected to protect the community alongside others on the coastline. “That is what we know and that is what we are working on,” he said.

With that tone of finality, residents of Okun Alfa may have to wait much longer to have the much desired respite from their government.

Why Okun Alfa experiences flooding, by Elegushi

Michael Simire
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Why Okun Alfa experiences flooding, by Elegushi

The Okun Alfa community, which hosts the once-popular Alpha Beach in Lekki area of Eti-Osa Local Government in Lagos, has in numerous occasions been besieged by the nearby Atlantic Ocean, losing its attraction to settlers and fun seekers.

Ongoing drainage construction
Ongoing drainage construction

Council chairman, Anofiu Elegushi, attributes the tragedy to the combined effects of ocean surge, lack of drainage facility, poor urban planning and, most of all, the aftermath of the erection of a fence Chevron Nigeria Limited, which operates close-by. According to him, whenever there is a surge or excessive rainfall which results in flooding, the water gets trapped within the community without anywhere to flow out to, damaging properties and valuables worth millions. He laments that the perimeter fencing traps the flood water within the community.

He says: “Some years ago after Chevron acquired some land within our community and started constructing their fence, they made use of our only access road and heavy duty trucks plied the road. After the construction of the fence, they abandoned our road which is now in a bad state and constructed a new road to be used by them only. Also their fence is higher than the community, so whenever it rains Okun Alfa is at the receiving end. They are not concerned about the suffering they have put us into but are satisfied with their great wall fenced against the community. No iota of care about the host community.”

Efforts to speak to officials of Chevron over Elegushi’s allegation proved abortive.

However, another school of thought insists that the increasing level of surge experienced in the community has been necessitated by the ongoing Eko Atlantic City project by the Lagos State Government in the past five years. The new city is expected to accommodate 250,000 residents after completion.

A Professor of environmental law with the Nigeria Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and also Executive Director of the Environment Law Research Institute (ELRI), Lanre Fagbohun, has decried the manner of conception of the project, saying that before a project of such magnitude would have been proposed and earmarked for commencement, an environment impact assessment (EIA) should have been prepared and the report made available to the public. But, according to him, the EIA of the project was made available years after its commencement.

“An EIA is not a condemnation of a project but an assessment of the environmental consequences which could be good or bad, and how communities and institutions would prepare to accept and adapt to such a project. But this was not the case with the Eko Atlantic City project,” he stresses.

Elegushi has however refused to completely blame the Eko Atlantic City project as the main cause of the impasse because, according to him, community’s present location is its fourth point of settlement due to past surges. He believes that the solution to the surge is the construction of an embankment by the beach side to break the power of the ocean tide and a sustainable drainage system that would channel excess water outward from the community.

Lagos State commissioner for the environment, Tunji Bello, says the state government is working on constructing a drainage channel that would connect with a nearby drainage in the area and flow out through the Lagos Lagoon. Initially slow, but work on the drainage appears to have picked up.

Destroyed community health centre
Destroyed community health centre

The residents by the beach do not have electricity because the poles have been washed away, the community health centre has been destroyed by the ocean, while the access road to the community from the expressway is in a deplorable state and is always flooded. Indeed, business activities around the beach is a ghost of its former self.

While the drainage construction is ongoing, residents and community leaders want Chevron to play a key role in making life more meaningful for them.

By Tina Armstrong-Ogbonna

Gulf of Guinea countries face environmental security challenge

Michael Simire
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Gulf of Guinea countries face environmental security challenge

Environmental security remains a challenge in the Gulf of Guinea and needs a sustained, robust response by countries in the area, Abidjan Convention Regional Coordinator, Abou Bamba, said on Tuesday.

Bamba
Bamba

“From Nouackchott to Port Harcourt, the lives of millions are threatened by climate change related environmental risks,” he said at the opening of an environmental security symposiun in Lome, capital of Togo.

The four-day symposium is co-sponsored by the United States Africa Command (U.S. AFRICOM) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) through the UNEP-administered secretariat of the Abidjan Convention.

The Gulf of Guinea is among the world’s most productive marine areas. However, it faces serious environmental challenges such as coastal erosion, sea level rise, land-based sources of pollution, overfishing, and major oil spills that threaten the life and livelihoods of tens of millions of coastal dwellers from Banjul, Gambia; to Port Harcourt, Nigeria.

Recent heavy rains that caused massive flooding in the city of Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, killing 32 residents illustrates this situation and the vulnerability of the region’s coastal settlements.

Environmental security covers a wide variety of issues, making a widely accepted single definition fraught with difficulties. Nevertheless, the concept examines environmental episodes that threaten individuals, communities or nations or that could lead to conflict. Environmental security along the marine and coastal space of West, Central and Southern Africa – the Abidjan Convention area – would protect human and marine life, as well as coastal habitats.

The symposium in Togo was opened by the country’s minister for environment, Andre Johnson, and United States Ambassador Robert Whitehead.

This symposium will cover topics such as global environmental security challenges, implication of climate change on international security and water security, waste management, contaminated land assessment, clean-up of mining activities, and environmental considerations during military peacekeeping operations.

This is the fifth environmental security symposium that U.S. AFRICOM Environmental Security Programme and UNEP have organized, jointly. Previous ones were in Accra (Ghana), Gaborone (Botswana) and Libreville (Gabon) and Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire), respectively. U.S. AFRICOM collaborates with the Abidjan Convention on marine and coastal environmental ecosystem issues.

The Abidjan Convention is a legal entity for Cooperation in the Protection and Development of the Marine and Coastal Region of West, Central and Southern Africa. Its emergency protocol on oil spills came into force in 1984. The Convention area covers 22 countries along the Atlantic coast of West Africa from Mauritania to South Africa. The United Nations Environment Programme headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, administers the Convention, whose secretariat is in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.

By Olubusiyi Sarr (Abidjan Convention) 

Climate change: Tackling poverty, ignorance

Michael Simire
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Climate change: Tackling poverty, ignorance

Ignorance could often be considered a significant factor of influence in the wise of the low-level   perception of climate change among the common people of the developing world, but a more obvious pointer is their decried poverty state which has negatively influenced their take on the climate issue. The fact is that their common orientation towards devising a more or less daily surviving strategy way outweighs their relative concern for the inevitable change which in most cases they tend to term as not relevant considering their relative state of living. In a lot of respect, the premise is not that they do not feel or perceive the dangerous changes, in fact, these set of people, who make up the larger proportion of the developing countries’ population have come to recognise the fact that there are changes already well obvious around their respective environment and which in a way have been impacting their respective livelihood support systems.

Pachauri, head of IPCC
Pachauri, head of IPCC

The recent report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calls for a timely intervention as climate change has started affecting food security and a worst-case scenario has been predicted as an inevitable future occurrence if nothing is done. Now the perception is a call for global interventions, which would include individual responsibilities as a precursor to a complimentary alliance of stand.

As important as this preceding premise may sound, it has not yet resulted into a significant move of change by the average citizens of the developing world most especially the people of sub-Saharan Africa where the average living standard is categorically low on the global scale. Additionally, it is a common fact that the regions are well susceptible to political insurgencies, civil/social unrest and poor governmental system. All of these factors have been sort of prevailing problems which have greatly subjected this category of population to untold hardship and pains and in a lot of way have influenced their adopted attitude to their environment as issues they term as secondary.

In my field experience as a climate change activist and a social change maker in a developing country, I have often noticed a biased sort of mindset and attitude among my audience in the regards of their respective take on climate change issue. Most times the responses have been a little disturbing as they all tend to be on the indifference side. On a point of inference, they tend to accept the notion of the changes around them as a phenomenon that goes beyond their human reasoning and could be attributed to as acts of God in probably punishing the humans race for their sinful nature and in another wise they tend to accept the changes as normal and as one of those proposition of the west.

Of course a general inference can be deduced from these responses; ignorance and a common base of poverty, which only allows for a one way thinking of making ends-meet first before any other issue. However this biased notion and perception is not limited to the ignorant or the illiterates but also the educated and literate lots. Often they claim to have heard or come across issues concerning climate change but often I tend to obtain a general conclusion of ‘it’s the responsibility of the government to intervene’. This obviously leaves out the option of personal or individual commitment. The youths are not left out as their attitudes records a more disturbing response of indifference, the general notion has been to make a living first and strive to live out of the reach of poverty. So in most cases, the much expectations of optimism from the youths is often quite discouraging and in the end, just a few youths are found taking a stand and making the move for the desired changes.

The average socio-economic situation in most developing countries has rather made it difficult for the general acceptance of a common and individual stand to combat climate change and its impacts. In a way they tend to bear more pains under the impact of climate change, although their respective population contribute less to the global green house gas emission, their quota of responsibility is however low compared to the impeding danger. Of course, there could be a level of supposedly injustice as they have contributed less to global warming and yet they suffer the most, but a notion worthy of taking cognisance of is for the fact that the impact of climate change is going to be felt by everybody on this planet and no population would be left unaffected as the threat becomes more real. So the time calls for a unanimous move and intervention by the lots around the globe, despite the differences and prevailing problems, we have a much bigger problem that will claim the future we are trying hard to live in.

To make a lot of difference the governments have a major responsibility, a feasible level of commitment that will reflect in the well being of the society to maintain a standard of living that would help fast track a significant attainment of mindset with the rest of the world in ensuring a global stand against climate change.

As the world prepares for yet another climate treaty come 2015, a serious outlook towards making a concrete and legal binding agreement is very necessary now, the issue of non-compliance and stand-alone should be matters of exclusion and a well charted way forward is greatly expected to help save our future. Even though the developing world may not have the capacity and the technologies to adapt in this era of climate change, yet there are lots of alternative means that could easily be adopted to ensure a meaningful level of commitment toward a global stand. Also the developed world should fast track the delivery of their respective commitments and leave up to the global expectation of doing rather than stalking.

The world is done with waiting and procrastination, a bit of tarrying could only mean one thing: ‘Disaster’.

By Bamidele F. Oni (Executive Director, Green Impact International)

Why Nigeria does not need genetically modified foods

Michael Simire
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Why Nigeria does not need genetically modified foods

In a recent edition of “Fact Sheet,” a publication of the ecological think-tank, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), writers Juan Lopez, Mariann Orovwuje and Nnimmo Bassey insist that Nigeria does not need genetically modified crops to satisfy its food and agricultural needs. They claim that the National Biosafety Bill is deficient and that President Goodluck Jonathan should not assent to it.

 

GMOsThe recent disclosure in Abuja by the National Agricultural Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA) that Nigerian government is working to fast track the adoption of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is shocking for a number of reasons. The agency’s pitch is more or less that if the doors are not officially open to GMOs Nigerians will be consuming them without knowing. The truth is that there are GMO products illegally in Nigeria and the government ought to be protecting the citizens rather than closing the doors on the Precautionary Principle which as the name implies urges caution in matters of this nature.

The Agency claims the there are enough safeguards in place for the introduction of GMOs into Nigeria. These so-called safeguards include the following: a draft Biosafety Bill, biosafety application guidelines, biosafety containment facilities guidelines, and a variety of forms such as those for accreditation, GMO import and shipment form and a host of drafts. If forms and draft documents are listed as biosafety readiness tools we should be extremely suspect of such a state of readiness.

 

A Short History: Few Crops Commercialised, Numerous Rejections of GM Food

It was only 20 years ago that a genetically modified crop was commercialised in the USA for human consumption purposes for the first time. It was a GM tomato variety called the Flavr Savr. It failed in the marketplace and its commercialisation ceased in 1997. That failure has been followed by numerous other failures in the past two decades.

The biotech industry has made several attempts to commercialise a wide range of GM varieties since the 1990s. However it quickly encountered stiff opposition. For instance in Europe strong opposition against GM foods took root since the end of the 90s and is still strong as of today.

In 2000 field trials with a variety of GM potato in Bolivia, centre of origin of the potato, were stopped in the face of public opposition. That same year GM potatoes were withdrawn in the US due to commercial failure. In 2002 a number of African countries rejected GM food aid and in 2004 GM wheat was withdrawn from the market due to commercial reasons. China suspended commercialisation of GM rice in 2011 and the US did not proceed with wide commercialisation either of such products. The failures to market GE staple food in the past twenty years have been very notorious.

 

Biotech Industry Targets Staple Foods

Maize, rice and wheat are the staple food of more than two-thirds of the world’s population, but as of now, no wheat and rice has been legally commercialized in the human food chain. As of today, basically the GM crops that have been commercialized are those of soya, maize, oilseed rape and cotton. Most of these products are not intended directly for food, but for animal feed purposes.  For instance, GM maize is strongly resisted in many countries like Mexico, centre of origin of maize, where a Federal Court in 2013 ordered that two of the main Mexican authorities for authorising GM crops must abstain from granting permits of release into the environment of GM maize whether on a commercial or on an experimental basis.

While most GM crops are planted for animal feeds, those targeted in Nigeria are for our foods. Among the target crops is cassava, a staple for most citizens.

 

Few Countries, Few Traits, One Industry

The few crops commercialised during the past decades were composed only of two traits, and their area of cultivation has been limited to a handful of countries. Over 90 per cent of GM crops grown are only in six countries – USA, Brazil, Argentina, India, Canada and China – with one country alone accounting for 40 per cent of all GM global area: the USA.

In any case, in two decades of GM crops commercialisation, up to 95 per cent of the staple crops which have been commercialised are insect resistant or herbicide tolerant. The push for the introduction of these type of GM staple crops has been led either directly by the big biotech corporations that developed the product or their subsidiaries.

None of these traits, however provide any benefit to the consumer, and none of them as of today has managed to win the heart of the majority of the consumers. For instance, even in the US, the cradle of GM crops, a poll conducted by the New York Times in 2013 concluded that three-quarters of Americans expressed concern about genetically modified organisms in their food, with most of them worried about the effects on people’s health. In The reality of such scepticism has forced the biotech industry to desperately seek to widen its market into Africa. The claim that Europe is influencing Africans to reject GMOs is nothing other than cheap blackmail.

 

More Herbicides

Roundup Ready (RR), the most popular herbicide in the world, property of Monsanto, claimed when it was introduced that farmers would be able to use less herbicide. On the contrary it has been clearly proofed that, in less than two decades glyphosate resistant plant species have become a serious problem for US farmers and others around the world. This has necessitated the increased use of even stronger herbicides.

In addition to the growing use of RR, various scientific studies show concerns over health impacts of RR on the humans. A scientific study published in a European scientific review has identified serious health impacts on rats fed on ‘Roundup Ready’ GMO maize.

 

Efforts to Convince Africans over GM Food Should Fall on Deaf Ears

Today a new propaganda effort to convince Africans is vigorously pursued by corporations and the development industry trying to convince us Africans that we need genetic engineering to overcome malnutrition and food shortages. Institutions like USAID, and philanthropic organisations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are supporting efforts to genetically modify rice and bananas with enhanced levels of Vitamin A with the ostensible aim of keeping African children from being stunted and from going blind. Gates support of the creation of GM staple foods with nutritional traits derives from the fact that “in many developing countries, as much as 70 per cent of an individual’s daily calories come from a single staple food, making it difficult to consume enough vitamins and minerals”. Instead of promoting and supporting food sovereignty and one of its principles – diet diversification- they want us to keep our diet based on one food product for most of the day instead of supporting the tapping on the enormous food diversity existing in our countries, – such us fruits and vegetables, rich in Vitamin A and other valuable Vitamins.

In a 2009 report, the Union of Concerned Scientists stated, “Recent studies have shown that organic and similar farming methods that minimise the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers can more than double crop yields at little cost to poor farmers in such developing regions as sub-Saharan Africa.”

Efforts to co-opt small scale farmers into planting Bt cotton has not fared we’ll without heavy subsidies. The case of the downturn at Makathini Flats, South Africa, is instructive.

 

Nigeria

Nigeria does not need GM crops to satisfy its food and agriculture needs. We know exactly what we have to do and the Nigerian National Conference recently raised the caution with regard to the draft National Biosafety Bill. We urge that the President should not assent to the Bill because the draft is deficient in many areas including:

  • Public participation: The draft Bill does not make public participation obligatory when applications to introduce GMOs are being considered.
  • The Bill does not specify clearly how large-scale field trials would be contained and regulated to avoid contamination of surroundings or farms.
  • Besides Environmental NGOs, Farmer organisations are not represented on the Governing Board.
  • Risk Assessment: The Bill does not state criteria for risk assessment nor does it stipulate that such assessments must be carried out in Nigeria and not offshore. This is important because the effect of the GMO on non-target organisms has to be measured with non-target organisms that exist in Nigeria and are ecologically important.
  • Strict liability and provisions for redress are not included in the Bill. These is a key part to implementing the Kuala Lumpur-Nagoya Supplementary Protocol adopted three years ago
  • Precautionary principle: The Bill should adhere to ensure the implementation of the precautionary principle that entitles our government to decide against approval or for restriction in cases of incomplete or controversial knowledge. This is the essential feature of the CPB, driven by the interests of African negotiators and and should be implemented in Nigeria.

Journalists get capacity for investigative reporting

Michael Simire
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Journalists get capacity for investigative reporting

In view of the evolving importance of environmental journalism in Nigeria, the practice is about to get a boost as environmental reporters join other journalists to get international training on investigative reporting.

Bohmke
Bohmke

This will help strengthen the coverage of environmental issues by using courtroom cross-examination tactics to dig up underlying issues and dynamics which usually get obfuscated by stakeholders across both sides of the divide.

The new African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR) began a two-day workshop in Abuja on July 21st, aimed at equipping journalists with the forensic skills to interrogate interviewees to test whether they are lying or not.

The first-of-its-kind workshop is tagged “Cross Examination Course for Investigative Reporters”, and is planned to open in Lagos after the Abuja sessions.

Cross-examination is a science, used by the legal profession to sift truth from lies; although widely used by prosecutors and forensic investigators, journalists have seldom been trained to use the techniques and tools.

The trainer and resource person, Heinrich Bohmke, is a South Africa based international cross examination expert.

In his opening remarks, Bohmke assured the participants that the training was not for “sunshine journalists” who just push out information to the public, but was designed to assist reporters who want to dig deep to structure their questions in order to make exposes.

“This training is designed to transfer courtroom techniques to the journalism craft. It will effectively equip reporters with the techniques of questioning through which they either get concessions or discredit answers, in situations where there is dispute of fact,” he said.

The workshop is being hosted by Connected Development (CODE), an Abuja-based non-governmental organisation (NGO).

How government killed Nigeria’s cocoa industry

Michael Simire
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How government killed Nigeria’s cocoa industry

Our cocoa industry has the potential to employ millions of Nigerians and also create economic spin-offs, which would in turn provide employment for other millions. But, sadly, this is not so. Over the years, successive governments have killed the industry with bad policies, weak vision and deliberate corruption and cooperation with external vested interests.

Cocoa-tree-1Nigeria is the fourth-largest producer of cocoa beans in the world, behind Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and Indonesia. After petroleum, cocoa is the country’s most important export – before independence, cocoa generated about 90 per cent of Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings. Today, about 300,000 to 350,000 tonnes of cocoa are produced every year, but more than 96 per cent of this is exported. This looks good on the surface; but when one looks deeply, the Nigerian government’s policy on cocoa export is killing our economy. Secondly, the government’s deliberate discouragement of small businesses in cocoa-based manufacturing brutally hit the cocoa industry.

Export is good; but when it is only empowering foreign businessmen while taking away jobs from Nigerians, it should be reviewed drastically. Experts in the industry have constantly raised alarm over government’s continued incentives to cocoa exporters, as opposed to cocoa processors. It is interesting to note that almost all the cocoa exporting firms are owned by foreigners.

According to Gbenga Osinaike, a cocoa industry analyst, “From all indications, exporting raw cocoa is indirectly helping the economies of the importing foreign countries’ economy. In most of the other countries where cocoa is produced, the exporters of the produce are made to pay tax to the government; but in Nigeria, government’s Export Expansion Grant on the commodity is as good as subsidising exporters. Exporters of raw cocoa are receiving undue government patronage. This trend, in a way, will only help to discourage private efforts at processing and in the long run kill the nation’s economy and keep our youths perpetually in the unemployment market.”

The truth is that the few Nigerians who are in the business of cocoa processing cannot compete with the foreign companies who take our raw cocoa to their country, process in their factories and bring back to us as finished cocoa-based products. This is very much like the dilemma we all cry about today bedevilling the petroleum industry; whereby we export our crude oil, and then import it as costly refined products.

This trend has chased a lot of Nigerians out of the cocoa business. One of the few still weathering the storm, Dimeji Owofemi, said in an interview recently, “It will be enough if the government stops giving incentives to those exporting the raw material because the raw material is a core element. For instance, in our industry, we don’t need any other raw material; it’s cocoa, 99 per cent. The rest of the items in the finished product – milk and sugar – are less than one per cent in value. So, the government needs to stop giving incentives to us on one hand and taking it back on the other hand by giving incentives to those who have external factories because the incentive being giving on raw beans export is incentive to external factories. Those external factories are being protected by their own countries through the imposition of taxes on the cocoa we have added value to.”

The irony is that most of the cocoa-based end products are labelled as contrabands in Nigeria, but the rate at which they still find their way into our borders is alarming. A brief trip to any ‘trendy’ local supermarket will illustrate this. This therefore raises the million naira question: “Is it, how porous is our borders, or how weak are our policies?” And this can only be answered by the Nigerian Customs Service, and the National Planning authorities.

The government must be practical. If our 170 million-population cannot be satisfied by the local cocoa-based products; there are two options before us. Firstly, the government could lift the ban, but tax the importation so severely that the foreign firms targeting the Nigerian market would be forced to open factories in the country, thereby boosting our economy. Secondly, the government could totally ban importation of all cocoa-based products, and strictly implement this; and then pump in angel funds and grants to Small and Medium Scale businesses to develop a robust indigenous cocoa-based manufacturing value chain.

This brings me to the other problem. During the late 1990s, NAFDAC and SON clamped down on Nigerian businessmen who were engaged in the so-called ‘mushroom manufacturing’ of packaged cocoa-based beverages. In those days, the local markets were flooded with small sachets of ‘alternative bournvita’. They came in several brand names: CocaMela, CocoVita, MorningCoco, etc. They catered to the needs of the Nigerian masses many of who could not afford the big cans of the established cocoa beverage brands. Note that in those days these big brands did not produce the little sachets that are common in the market today. Then, it was either you bought the big can or you could not ‘drink tea’. Therefore, a beverage morning meal or ‘tea’ was a rich man’s breakfast.

The Nigerian government’s decision to chase the small beverage producers out of the system effectively killed a budding industry that would have solved two problems at one stroke. It would create employment for the teeming youth population while empowering them with the requisite knowledge to populate an emerging production value chain. It would also provide an easy market for the nation’s cocoa raw material, and in turn catalyse a local cocoa processing sub sector. To be candid, Nigeria had the opportunity to become an industrial giant just like China who started out with this kind of small holder business model. But we lost all this in an overzealous drive by a visionless public service.

I personally interviewed one of the frustrated beverage manufacturers. He graduated from a Nigerian university in 1996; after NYSC, he decided to become an entrepreneur so learnt how to package the sachet beverage. He bought processed cocoa from Ondo State; and after production, supplied his branded products in several parts of the country. Before his second year in the industry, he had expanded his one-room factory to a warehouse, and employed other 36 Nigerian youths. NAFDAC supervised his brand, gave him a registration number, and business was going well; until the government came up with new, untenable, guidelines aimed at kicking them out of business. Many of these entrepreneurs insist that the government was working in cahoots with established beverage brands who felt threatened by the mass reception of these mushroom brands by the enormous market existing in this great nation.

It does not take a professional statistician to know the harm done to Nigeria by the policy. The youths that were potentially disengaged from fruitful enterprise and sustainable capacity can only be counted in the millions. The man I interviewed is now a low paid civil servant; while he would have become an international businessman by now, counting his millions and inventing more job-creating ventures. There is no over-emphasising the fact that a nation where everybody is dependent on the government to provide his every need is headed for the rocks. No wonder, at the ongoing National Conference, every Dike, Tolu and Haruna is out-shouting each other over sharing of the nation’s resources; Assets that we are not even ready to manage with wisdom and transparency. May God help Nigeria.

By Greg Odogwu

‘Nigeria sits on environmental health time bomb’

Michael Simire
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‘Nigeria sits on environmental health time bomb’

Just when Nigerians are counting on the possibility that Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, will be counted among the best cities of the world, facts about how well-planned cities are rated have begun to emerge, and the indices suggest that some Abuja high-brow districts are far from measuring up to international standards.

It has been disclosed that, environmentally speaking, Asokoro, which is one of Abuja’s elite districts, is a slum.

Ebisike
Ebisike

The Registrar, Environmental Health Officers Registration Council of Nigeria (EHORECON), Augustine Ebisike, in a chat with EnviroNews Nigeria in his office last weekend, disclosed that most of the districts of Abuja score the zero mark when it comes to environmental health designs and facilities.

According to the environmental health expert, Nigeria is sitting on a health time bomb because the infrastructure and practices that enhance human health are fast deteriorating and, if not checked, by the next couple of decades the nation shall be contending with severe health issues which were brought about by preventable circumstances.

“There are a lot of practices that are neglected today but which are detrimental to the environment. Take for example, dirty water is not supposed to be used to mould construction blocks, but right here in Abuja and everywhere else the situation is that people just go and start a block moulding factory and use dirty water to produce them, and nobody says anything about this. These blocks built with dirty water have been proved to have short life span, and before long, they begin to disintegrate,” Ebisike said.

“Another fact is that the streets here are not built to enhance the wellbeing of citizens. Even Asokoro, and some other districts of Abuja, were designed like a slum. This is because in a well-planned standard residential area, the streets are planned in a way that there is space for pedestrians, and also cyclists, so that people can exercise. The international standard is that builders could use only 50 per cent of space in a plot for building in a residential area, while 75 per cent in a commercial plot; the rest space is supposed to be open ground for diverse health-enhancing facilities.”

The EHORECON boss also shed light on the fact that most working class Nigerians are living sedentary life which is not healthy, considering that the human body needs constant physical exercises to maintain a sound condition and biological equilibrium.

“Today we all live a sedentary lifestyle, and our children’s only way of spending their leisure time is playing video games, computers and television. Nobody exercises, and in the future we shall have a whole lot of preventable diseases come upon us. In fact, we are sitting on a time bomb.

“The truth is that 70 per cent of illnesses are preventable with environmental modifications. But even in Abuja here we are living a sedentary lifestyle while there are no playgrounds for our children to play at home. Nigeria needs environmental health interventions to remedy the situation. This is why the Federal Government, by the Act 11 of 2002, established Environmental Health Officers Registration Council of Nigeria.”

It will be recalled that during the colonial and post-colonial era, the efforts at keeping the environment clean through societal effort in self-determination, self-motivation and self-reliance with the community concept of full participation were initiated; these efforts were spearheaded by the then Sanitary Inspectors who moved from house to house enforcing environmental health standards.

Unfortunately over the years, Environmental Health (EH) services and EH practice deteriorated in Nigeria from the standard set by the British colonial masters to a position of total neglect of the sub-sector by both succeeding governments and the general society over the years.

It is also on record that the Sanitary Inspectors now known as Environmental Health Workers (EHO) were the major motivators who moved from house-to-house to inspect premises, educate household members on sanitation and hygiene matters, caused nuisances to be abated and also enforced necessary environmental health related laws and regulations.

“First, by providence, Environmental Health has been recognised as a profession Nigeria through an Act of parliament the Environmental Health Officers (Registration, etc) Act 11 of 2002. The Environmental Health Officers Registration Council of Nigeria has been established to regulate the profession. What needs to be done is for all Nigerians to adopt Environmental Health consciousness and fall back on what was done right in those days of sanitary inspectors which worked well for our public health and environmental integrity.

“Second, Environmental Health services must be seen as public good that needs to be protected and the practice guided to enable it contribute to national development. The Transformation Agenda of President Goodluck Jonathan has outlined the need to empower people, promote private enterprise and change the way people do their work to reduce poverty and inequality. A good platform for achieving this is a disciplined environmental health culture, which provides the opportunity for optimal health and aesthetic environment,” he concluded.

By Greg Odogwu

HIP REPLACEMENT SURGERY

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How environmental degradation induces insecurity, insurgency

Michael Simire
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How environmental degradation induces insecurity, insurgency

Environmental activists and experts are of the view that deliberate efforts to tackle environmental challenges in Nigeria will help to check the wave of insecurity in the country.

Boko_Haram_2According to them, a large chunk of the insecurity around the world can be directly or indirectly linked to environmental issues such as pollution and desert encroachment. They argue that environmental pollution adversely affects farmlands and water supply, and erodes the people’s sources of livelihood, which in turn makes them susceptible to violence.

Supporting this argument, an environmentalist, Dr Desmond Majekodunmi, cited the case of the Niger Delta, where protesting youths are wont to blow up oil pipelines and kidnap oil workers, to express their grievance over environmental pollution caused by oil exploration and exploitation, as an indication of how environmental issues fuel insecurity.

Majekodunmi said one of the major causes of insecurity in Nigeria, and indeed in other African countries, is environmental degradation.

Majekodunmi
Majekodunmi

“When you have a situation like the one in northern Nigeria where climate change and unabated deforestation have caused the desert to move relentlessly and take over villages, definitely we are going to have hundreds of thousands of environmental refugees. So I am not surprised when they say that some hungry people in the north were given peanuts to carry out terrorist activities. Apart from those that are used by terrorists, take a look at the recurrent problems between the Fulani herdsmen and Plateau people. The Fulanis are looking for grasses to feed their animals, because the far north has been taken over by the desert. And the attempt by Plateau State residents to resist them (the Fulanis) has led to several fights, killing many people and destroying property,” he said.

The insecurity situation in Nigeria is concentrated in the Niger Delta and the North Eastern areas.

While residents in Niger Delta have lost their farmlands and the water meant for drinking and fishing to widespread pollution as a result of oil exploration and exploitation by multinational oil companies, those in the northern states have lost farmlands to rapidly encroaching desert.

Another environmentalist, Ayo Tella, believes that insurgency across the globe is environmentally induced. He said, “Over the years, youths in oil producing areas have posed serious security threat in the region, citing the destruction of their ecosystem by oil companies as their grievance.”

The media recently reported a protest by residents and environment stakeholders in Bayelsa State, which also served to renew the call on oil companies to clean up the pollution they caused or else vacate the region. The residents reportedly complained of the destruction of their sources of livelihood, such as fishing and farming which sustained them before oil exploration began in their region.

A visitor to communities such as Akumazi, Umunede, Ute-okpu, Ewuru, Idumuesah and Ejeme in Delta State would find that all water bodies there are coloured with patches of oil. Similarly, many lands in the areas have been excavated for oil.

According to UNDP Report in 2013, “the Niger Delta region is suffering from administrative neglect, crumbling social infrastructure and services, high unemployment, social deprivation, abject poverty, filth and squalor, and endemic conflict. The majority of the people of the Niger Delta do not have adequate access to clean water or health-care. Their poverty, in contrast with the wealth generated by oil, has become one of the world’s starkest and most disturbing examples of the resource curse.”

On the other hand, terrorist activities are concentrated in the northern states and perpetrated mostly by a group known in Hausa language as “Boko Haram” which literally means: Western education is forbidden.

The sect, believed to have been formed in 2002, allegedly launched military operations in 2009 to create an Islamic state in Nigeria. Before President Goodluck Jonathan declared a State of Emergency in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states in May 2013, an estimated 741 citizens had already died in coordinated attacks, according to a report by the University of Sussex in the UK. The report also says that at least 2,265 have died while about three million people have been affected as at April, 2014.

The devilish activities of the Boko Haram include the multiple bombing of military barracks, media houses and busy bus stops in Abuja, the UN House in Abuja, and the abduction of nearly 300 girls from a government secondary school in Chibok, Yobe State. The abduction has grabbed global attention, giving rise to widespread protests under the twitter platform “#BringBackOurGirls”.

Analysts believe that endemic poverty caused by desertification turned farmlands into barren lands and made the region a fertile ground for terrorists. There is an allegation that unemployed and hungry youths gladly accept peanuts from the masterminds to get involved in terrorism.

The rate of desertification in the country is reported to be high with the attendant destruction of about 2,168sq km of range land and cropland each year in the north. In Yobe State, which is one of the states under emergency rule, a study revealed that, in 1986, the rate of desertification which stood at 23.71 per cent increased to 31.30 per cent in 1999 and, by 2009, it had covered almost half of the state.

The report says that crop cultivation and animal rearing are no more productive in the state, because the soil has lost its fertility, while various infrastructures had collapsed as windstorm from the neighbouring Niger Republic and sand dunes had taken over the entire place.

In an interview, some northerners, who now reside in Lagos, claimed they fled the area and were engaged in menial jobs such as shoe mending, manicure, cart pushing and others, because the encroaching desert destroyed their farms.

Recently, Nigeria was rated by the World Bank Group as among the world’s extremely poor countries, alongside India, China, Bangladesh, DR Congo, Indonesia, Pakistan, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Kenya, even with the country’s huge economy, the largest in Africa. However, a map of the country shows that its poverty index is concentrated in the northern states where desert encroachment is more pronounced.

Militancy and insurgency in the Niger Delta and the northeast zone have placed Nigeria on the map of most insecure regions of the world known for violent crimes such as bombings, manslaughter and kidnapping of innocent people for heavy ransoms. Many concerned citizens believe that the authorities have not given adequate priority to tackling the country’s environmental challenges which would ultimately check the high level of insecurity in the polity.

For instance, the country’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) document which holds industries accountable for the pollution and other environmental problems they cause in the process of their operations, has not been effectively implemented. Also, a Climate Change Commission Bill which seeks to galvanise actions of the relevant stakeholders to address climate change blamed on desert encroachment, flooding, loss of biodiversity and other environmental changes is yet to receive Presidential assent.

Many environmentalists consider such delays in the promulgation and implementation of required policies as a major setback towards creating a sustainable environment in Nigeria.

Majekodunmi said: “We have always had beautiful policies to create shelter belts to tackle desertification in the north. We had one about 21 years ago, during the military era which, if implemented, would have saved us the problems we face now.”

He is however optimistic that the ongoing Shelter Belt project which was inaugurated last year by the former Environment Minister, Hadija Mailafia, and championed by credible stakeholders (such as renowned environmentalist, Newton Jibuno), would be successful. According to him, the current environment minister should take over the project as well as the Great Green Wall programme so that they do not die like the ones before it.

Mailafia in July 2013 inaugurated the Great Green Wall (GGW) programme, in Bachaka, Kebbi State, which is meant “to create a contiguous greenbelt from the Northwest to the Northeast zone in the desert states with the objective of rehabilitating about 225,000 hectares of degraded lands, enhance food security, reduce rural poverty and generate employment for about 500,000 people in its first year of implementation”. The 11 most affected states, commonly called frontline states, are Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kano, Kastina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Yobe and Zamfara.

While launching the program, she regretted that £43.3 per cent of the total land area of the country is prone to desertification, exposing 40 million Nigerians to the threat of hunger and total starvation”. There is, however, no official confirmation of the extent of work done on the GGW project, but many people doubt if the worsening security problem in the region could allow any meaningful project to take place there.

Supporting this position, a security expert, Wilson Esangbedo, wonders “how a place under such serious security threat and heavy military deployment would welcome any development project”. According to him, “what is required is for the government to go to areas where there is relative peace and make its presence felt”.

Although oil companies are required to clean up their areas of operations, they cite the insecurity in the region as the excuse for failing to abide by the code. This explains why it is a welcome development that one of the giant companies operating there, ExxonMobil, has just announced plans to commence high sea clean-up of oil spills.

For the Managing Director, Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency, Dr. Adebola Shabi, the nation’s Environmental Impact Assessment should be enforced to make oil companies account for the pollution that they cause.

Other experts believe that getting oil firms to clean up their spills would not only encourage companies to buy and install pollution-control equipment, but would also help in creating jobs for the people. It is important that the government should have the will power to implement all its policies on creating a safe an environment conducive for the people to work and earn their living, in order to shun every temptation to disturb public peace.

By Innocent Onoh

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