HOW FULFILLED ARE YOU EXITING THE HOUSE AFTER EIGHT YEARS?
Yes I am fulfilled that by the mercy of God Almighty I was elected to the National Assembly and I was elected from one of the very powerful and sophisticated federal constituencies in the country, Ikwuano/Umuahia North and South. The constituency has had the opportunity of producing a head of state, former premier of the eastern region, a constituency that has produced many former governors, many ministers, chairman of a national ruling party, several generals, professors and business men. Easily one of the most sophisticated in this country. And I feel fulfilled that after being here for four years by his grace I was the first person to be re-elected from that constituency since 1999. And I came here and made my humble contributions. And those contributions were acknowledged. Among others, I was able to move several motions and bills and several projects and on top of that I was able to pursue the Bill on climate change which failed in the sixth, sevarth, and eight assemblies, and I was able to get it through with the support of my colleagues, the Speaker, His Excellency, Rt Hon Femi Gbajabiamila, the Senate President, the Deputy Speaker, even the Deputy Senate President. The people in administration here. The clerks. Somebody like Barrister Akubueze, even then clerk in the Senate. So it took a lot. Like I talked about consultation. To deepen and broaden your consultation when you are trying to get a bill. I worked with people in the Ministry of Environment under the leadership of Barr Chief Sharon Ikeazor, who was Minister of State for Environment then. And she worked with me in a very productive manner. I also had tremendous support from the then Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami SAN. I went to the office of the Vice President, Prof Yemi Osanbajo, to seek his input and support. And I went to so many places to consult. We got support from Climate Parliament, GLOBE and all that to be able to make sure we got this. Because the Climate Change Bill is not just for Nigeria alone but for the international community because like i said earlier anything about climate change is beyond this country. Like you pointed out, you people who always place a pulse on the performance of Hon Members came together on your own and gave me an award that was not based on any pecuniary pressure as the Dean of Bills and the Most Dedicated Lawmaker of Year 2021. After that I received an award from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. I also received another award from Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, the Climate Change Community in Nigeria, etc. And just on 21st May, 2023, I was Inducted as the Hall of Fame at National Assembly as one of the Most Valuable Parliamentarians. Out of 469 National Assembly Members comprising 360 Honourable Members and 109 Senators, I was one of the five. And the only one from the whole Southern Nigeria. So it is to the glory of God that these things happened. And like I would always say, I didn’t have the opportunity of sitting on so called “juicy committees,” but God has shown His mercy on me to be able to make contributions no matter how modest, but contributions which have the potential to impact meaningfully and productively on the wellbeing of Nigerians and global citizens.
WHAT IS THE CARBON CREDIT SCHEME ALL ABOUT?
When you talk about carbon you are talking about part of the pollution that disrupts the atmosphere and leads to emission of greenhouse gases. And that is not favourable to the environment, whether it is coming from oil producing or cement producing or those who are running factories, when it builds up in the air it becomes a big problem. So what people ahead of us (industrialised countries) have done is to say, okay, we should be able to impose a certain tax so that if you are producing or polluting to this level, let us have a threshold that is maybe, we can say it is acceptable and if you are going beyond you should be charged or for the pollution that you caused, you should pay tax for the carbon. Today you would agree with me that it is almost a free for all in the country. There is no proper control. Whereas other people who have used different forms of energy including the ones that are polluting the system to develop their places, these people are now putting controls. Therefore, carbon credits, also known as carbon allowances or offsets, are permission slips usually issued by governments or its designated agency or independent verifying companies that allow the holder to emit one tone of carbon or equivalent greenhouse gases. These industrialised countries are also transiting into renewable energy in such a way that they are using energy that is not polluting the environment and disrupting everything that we are doing. So we put it in the Act that the Ministry of Environment, working with the Federal Inland Revenue Service should be able to come up with a carbon tax and put a figure and this is collaboration with the National Council on Climate Change. And then we also said that there should be a pilot carbon budget 12 (twelve) months after the bill was assented to. So one of the reasons why I moved that motion is to bring to the consciousness of the government that we appear not to be meeting the targets that we set by ourselves through the Act that we have passed and assented to. And also, the law also provides in sections 19 and 20 that we should have a carbon budget of about five years cycle. That again we do not seem to be able to have completed. You can see that from November 2021 to November 2022 that is one year. Remember the other one said 12 months after assent. Perhaps some of you were not aware, but when I felt that we were almost going to fall foul of the law that we gave ourselves, I had to write to three critical offices that we worked or collaborated with in passing the Act. The office of the Minister of Justice and Attorney general of the Federation; he really played a very important role, when we were working on the bill that became an Act. I also wrote to the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), to say, there is need for us to activate this law properly so that the international community does not look at us, and ask, what are they doing. I also wrote to the office of the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to raise these issues. Why we are doing it is not because we want to be hard on the Executive and it’s agencies. No. It is just that we are joining others to take actions that are geared towards a very peaceful, very organized and orderly transition from fossil fuel based economic activities to something that guarantees that even when you are using the fossil fuel to produce that their emission levels do not get to a point where they are dangerous. So that is the reason for moving the motion and writing those letters that I wrote last year to call attention to these concerns.
AFTER THE PASSAGE OF THE CLIMATE CHANGE BILL, NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE.
I would like to put certain things in proper shape. One is that yes, I was worried, and I think you will permit me to say we were worried as the Parliament that there was an appearance that the law was not being duly followed as at that time. But I must also state publicly that the immediate past Federal Government moved ahead and started taking some actions. I would not say the letter from me prompted them, because it takes some time to make some very high decisions. Former President Buhari GCFR moved ahead and appointed a Director General. And former President, I think it was in September 2022, also inaugurated the National Council on Climate Change. You could argue that it took almost one year for it to be inaugurated which is a while. After inaugurating the National Council on Climate Change in September, early this year they were able to hold the first inaugural meeting. On what you have to do to the government whether there are individuals that work to frustrate a law, that has always been the case. I am not particularizing on the Nigerian Government, but when you check what goes on between bureaucrats and even the legislature you find out that sometimes, the bureaucrats have their own ways of circumventing rules or even laws. So I am not saying that is what happened, but of course if we didn’t know that, people like Max Weber would not be talking about why we need to make sure we have an efficient and effective system in place and running to achieve results without applying rule of the thumbs. So such a thing happens. We are not saying it is happening with this government but that it is up to people to work to ensure that you prevent such a situation from becoming the order of the day. Whether there was anybody who was working to frustrate it, I do not know about that. I think we have crossed the point where one could say that maybe there were challenges from the bureaucratic angle which made it impossible for the climate change bill to be assented to either in the sixth assembly, for it to fail again in the 7th Assembly and also in the 8th Assembly, when I first sponsored it. By the grace of God, we were able to get it in the 9th Assembly. But it is up to us to work together as a people to look at where we are standing. Why it is important that we must pursue the process of transitioning in an orderly and organized manner since we know that ours is a fossil fuel based economy? Well, we are also aware that major polluters like China, the United States of of America, India, Brazil and others, that they are working on how to transit from fossil fuel based economy to an economy that is powered through renewable energy. They are working very hard and are rapidly transiting. If anybody is telling you that industrialised countries and even developing countries are not transiting, that person is not telling you the truth.
That is why the efforts of the Federal Government to integrate Energy Transition Plan into what the National Council on Climate Change is doing is a welcome development. So we have a duty to get ourselves ready by planning and executing well on how to transit. The reason this is crucially important is that if we fail to do it now, we may end up being stranded with critical assets like oil, gas, etc that we know we have in abundance. If nobody is buying, if everybody transits and you are not joining to transit in an orderly and inclusive manner, then you would be left with it. So that is why it is important for all hands to be on deck.
WHAT IS YOUR MESSAGE TO TINUBU OVER THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE CLIMATE CHANGE ACT?
What I would like to see the new administration as far as the implementation is concerned is to have a robust approach towards the implementation of the Act. Not to allow gaps to occur in the implementation because this is a well thought out Act that is intended to give us a framework for a low greenhouse gas emissions, inclusive green growth and sustainable development. Essentially that is what this Act is all about. So we should see it implemented in an orderly manner. And we are not going to achieve that if we have gaps here and there. Like I said earlier, when we are aware that other people are making efforts including those who are the main polluters, you should know what to do. The other day President Biden talked so much about $470 billion that had been invested in renewable energy just within a short space of time. You can see that and check it with what the Chinese have done. How they are moving towards electric cars and all that, at a very fast pace, you now know that at a certain point, if we do not follow suit now, yes, we are not going to do it in a scattered manner, and then create crisis and unemployment and all that, but we have to do it in a way that is orderly and it is important for us to start early so we are not left with our oil and gas without anybody coming to buy it and meanwhile we have not been able to move to use alternative energy.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?
They are too many for us to begin to itemize. And if people thought there was no benefit to gain from such transition, the industrialised countries would not be doing it because we can see the rate of industrialization in their areas, yet they are working very hard. I was with a Chinese the other day and he told me of a city where you have charging points almost everywhere for the use of electric cars and the thing is moving at a very fast rate. Why do you think Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, is one of the richest men in the world today. What is he producing? He is producing electric powered vehicles. So we can benefit from that. I could even start from health. When you have bad pollution within the system, it affects health. For instance see what happened in Rivers State and it did not stop in Rivers State when we were having black soot all over the place. That is just one good example in terms of the benefits. It spread to Abia and I am sure it went to different parts of the country because pollution is borderless. Check what happened in Canada a few days ago when a wildfire sent a lot of smoke into the air and then it stretched not just in Canada but went to America and started disturbing massive cities like New York, Newark, Washington DC, and the rest of it. That is a health challenge. So when we talk about pollution, it comes in different forms and it has serious health impacts. In fact they went as far as saying apart from those having underlying challenges like asthma and other respiratory challenges, there is also the danger of the pollution affecting pregnant women, babies and also the pollution entering into your nostrils and coming through your blood stream. That is why recently WHO issued a serious statement on the challenges that are coming from climate change and impacting health.
Then you talk of the security angle. When the effect of climate change devastates areas whether you are talking from the northern part of the country today, the sahel region as a whole or why we have the National Great Green Wall covering about 11 states in the north which is about 1, 351 or so km. It is not a small area. I am talking of Nigeria. Not the one that is Africawide. Why did we do that? We did that because we saw that the land in that area has been badly degraded which means livelihood means within those areas are almost gone. For instance, the areas where herders grazed their cattle, farmed and participated in fishing activities and all that, that they have almost all dried up. That is why you see people bringing their cattles to the Southern part of the country to graze. That is why you see people who have now been driven into forced migration because where they were getting things to eat, they can no longer survive because it has turned into dust. So there are several reasons why we have to take the challenge of climate change seriously.
If we are developing in a sustainable manner we would not face drought and desertification, racing down from the north at the speed of 0.6km per annum. We did not even talk about Lake Chad that previously covered over 25,000 square miles and provided an area for fishing, farming and animal husbandry for well over 30 or so million persons coming from Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and all that. The question you should ask yourself is where are those 30 million people, who previously depended on small skills like farming, fishing, animal husbandry and all that. Where are they now? They are part of those who poured into the cities in the Northeast and became easily purchasable to do evil acts. So there are many things you can talk about.
When you come to the south east, areas where some of us used to go either to get water, like in my village we used to have six springs and streams but before one finished from primary school, when we used to run around to go to those places, post primary, tertiary, go to work, you return to the village, out of six, five had dried up. That is a challenge. So if you could not provide a borehole, you don’t know that the villagers had to spend enormous man hours that should have been employed in doing something else in search of water. So these things catch up with us in a way that sometimes we do not even know unless sometimes when you start hearing that climate change has serious security implications. And that is why as far back as June, 2009 the United Nations passed a resolution 63/281 informing the world that climate change has serious security implications. So there are reasons why we have to move in an orderly fashion, prepare ourselves so that we do not run into this crisis. You know, today we have a security crisis that is threatening the entire nation.
WHAT ARE THE LAPSES YOU HAVE NOTICED SO FAR IN THE ELECTORAL ACT?
Thank you for acknowledging that some of us participated in the making of the Electoral Act 2022 in a very meaningful way. I was lucky to represent the South East particularly in the joint technical committee. But before we were even nominated to serve in the Joint Technical Committee, which had 12 people, because it was two from each geopolitical zone, I represented the House for the South East Zone while Senator Ekweremadu represented from the Senate. Before we got to that stage, I was part of those that went for a retreat in Lagos where we resolved that prior Electoral Acts, whether you are talking of 2010 or 2015 that they should be repealed and a new Act enacted. That is why going forward, it is not the Electoral Act Amendment, it is the Electoral Act 2022. So that is where those resolutions were reached and we worked. Fortunately i was also nominated to participate in the joint technical committee. Well we made a lot of positive changes and of course you must have felt it the way the election went. Some of those changes we made had some impact. We introduced technology, electronic transmission of results, the powers to INEC to be able to review questionable results within seven days so that we don’t see a situation where people come up with a terrible result and ask you to go to court. You saw things that happened in a few states–Abia, Enugu, Adamawa, Kano, etc–where the results were either halted when it was obvious that it was moving in a questionable direction, only for INEC to review them. So you see that is a positive change. We also went as far as discussing how to conduct local government elections. You could say oh why local government elections but our arguments is that you are getting money directly from the federation account and after the money from federation account you now handpick, because that is what they do in those so called local government elections in states. You now handpick people to go and administer money that is coming straight from a federation account. We said no. We must find a way of ensuring that when you are doing local government elections, it should be in line with the overall objective of the Electoral Act 2022. . We are not saying we do not recognize the constitutional provisions for states independent Electoral commissions, but do it in a way that is in conformity with the law because you are drawing money from Federation accounts to run those local governments. And then the issue of primary elections that whatever any political party that wishes to nominate a candidate for election under the Act shall conduct primary elections for aspirants for all elective positions and that such primary elections shall be monitored by INEC. So this emphasis helped in way. Because I remember when I had my own case, I think it was one of the things that the courts the relied upon from the court of appeal to the supreme court to ensure that my victory at the Senatorial Primary Election was affirmed. I was able to win because I participated but the other individual who was laying claim to my ticket just dropped like unknown flying object. He never participated in the primary election. He never participated but he was laying claim. So those provisions managed to curb such excesses. There are several other things like I have talked about the electronic transmission, BVAS and all of that, we brought it in this Electoral Act. So on what you refer to as loopholes, it is difficult for me to take a position on that because a lot of matters are in court. By the time we are done with the court processes, then we would not be in a position to know maybe the findings of the court and maybe based on personal experiences too, so that if there is need to amend certain sections of the law to cure what we call mischief, that is precisely where we are. So I think it is a very positive development because elections are important in any democratic process. Reason being that, that is the only time that the elected official goes back to his employer, the people (electorate), to say, ‘please renew my mandate.’ So we must ensure that the processes are so secure and transparent such that we know that it is the person we want to hire that we actually hired, so that we can hold that person accountable.
Be the first to comment