By Iliya Kure
There are indications that Nigeria will pass the Climate Change Bill before the end of the year.
Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Climate Change, Samuel Onuigbo gave the hint at an interactive session with Journalists in Abuja weekend.
The committee chairman opined that climate change remains one of the major causes of the herdsmen-farmer crisis and Boko Haram insurgency in northeast Nigeria, saying greater understanding and solutions must be proffered to address the challenges.
“Over the years, the cumulative effect of some human activities has provoked climate change and drastic fall of the water level and by extension, fishery and crop farming became difficult while herdsmen are left with the only alternative of migration to other regions of the country in search of greener pasture,” he said.
Onuigbo explained that decades ago nomadic activities were mostly found around the Lake Chad Basin which attracted other huge commercial activities including fishing and crop farming in the North-Eastern of Nigeria.
“While some of these former fishermen and farmers could have ignorantly or consciously found insurgency as a better means of sustenance, herdsmen became threat to their new host communities whose crops and major investments are either eating up by herds or deliberately destroy,” he said
According to him, the legal framework of the Climate Change Bill has been presented to the House of Representatives and passed second reading.
The Bill calls for the ‘Establishment of the National Council on Climate Change and for Other Related Matters’, saying it “will expressly demonstrate our various commitments in the fight against all forms of environmental issues that are affecting the society.
“I have always reiterated that it is important for MDAs to make adequate budgetary provisions to back up our Climate Change commitments with practical and verifiable actions,” he said.
