Senate President Godswill Akpabio has advised the executive arm of government to channel the ecological funds to tackle environmental issues that are life threatening.
Akpabio gave the advice yesterday when the permanent secretary of the Ecological Project Office, Mallam Shehu Ibrahim, led officials of his agency on an interactive session with the Senate leadership.
The Senate president reacted to the submission of the permanent secretary who said the monthly N3bn allocation to his agency was grossly inadequate to tackle the requests it gets on a daily basis.
Ibrahim had told the Senate leadership that the agency was currently in possession of over 5,000 requests from disaster ravaged communities across the country for urgent attention.
Akpabio in his response urged the agency to prioritise its interventions.
He cited the case of ocean surge that is currently ravaging five states in southern Nigeria and the massive desert encroachment of the Lake Chad basin.
Akpabio promised that the Senate would carry out necessary legislative actions to assist the ecological office to perform well.
He said, “The method of intervening and selection of projects must be such that they will put urgency outside the normal data they are working with.
“The Ecological Office should attend to the most urgent situations that are likely to affect the lives of the people before it goes to the ones that may not affect lives. Those that are life-threatening should be selected first.”
Akpabio also encouraged the office to learn to preempt some of the natural disasters.
He specifically called on the agency to embark on advocacy that would encourage Nigerians to plant at least one tree per year.
He said the current desert encroachment in the northern part of the country showed that the agency was not conscious of the magnitude of the devastation.
He said, “Every child should be encouraged to plant at least one tree in a year. In the areas that are worst hit by the desert encroachment, people should be encouraged to plant one tree per month.
“Considering Nigeria’s population, doing that would help us to reclaim a lot of land to tackle the looming disaster.
“The same climate change that affected the Lake Chad basin, which used to have 125 square kilometers of water about 10 years ago, is now less per cent of its original size.
“The result of this is migration with the people hitherto earning their living from Lake Chad now having to migrate towards the South.
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