Environmentalist Odigha Odigha says Nigeria can lose over $1bn Dev. Grant from UN-REDD, Others

From Dianabasi Effiong, Calabar

Odigha, a sustainable development campaigner, gave the warning in an interactive session with journalists in Calabar on Monday.

According to him Nigeria’s expectations to access UN-REDD and other programme funds on climate change are threatened due to its inability to honour international Treaty Agreement on Environmental Policy and law.  

He also reiterated earlier calls for immediate de-revocation of the traditional rights of occupancy of all the 185 communities on the corridor of the proposed 260 km super highway in Cross River.

He said the proposed superhighway should be re-routed away from environmentally sensitive area otherwise the country’s remaining rainforest and its biodiversity will be lost.

Odigha said that failure to do these would rubbish all the international treaties Nigeria has entered into with the UN and other international organisations on climate change.

Odigha said President Muhammadu Buhari was availed this position through by more than 253, 000 signatures from communities affected by the superhighway, international and Non-Governmental Organisations in Abuja.

He said the 5,000-page protest documents were presented in eight volumes by some protesting youths and women from affected communities.

Odigha said he led the protesters as the Board of Trustee member of the Coalition for Environment (NGOSE), a non-governmental organisation.

He said their position was presented to the president through the Minister of Environment, Hajia Amina Mohammed in Abuja represented by the Minister of State on Environment, Alhaji Ibrahim Usman, in Abuja.

He said: “The state government is not complying with the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) law as it embarks on the Super Highway and Deep Sea port projects.

“The superhighway as intended by the state is not in harmony with your stance for sustainable development and the fight against the climate change crisis as reflected in your various international engagements.

“There is the right of the indigenous input of the community which the UN-REDD Programme considers in their activities.

“This means that the community has the right to be consulted before anything takes place in the community which we did not see in the superhighway projects and community rights were trampled upon.

“As we speak now, the right of the people to negotiate for the UN-REDD Programme has been revoked through the action of the state government.”

According to Odigha the UN-REDD programme is in its readiness stage.

“To get to that stage, I know very authoritatively that Nigeria has received 10 million US dollars to get ready, hold meetings and begin to put structures together and begin to monitor the forest.

“The series of meetings have been holding in Calabar in this regard and at the stage which we are now, last month we were privileged to attend the UN-REDD meeting were they are trying to get inputs from the people.

“When these strategies are constructed, Nigeria can now access substantial amount of funds. But for these problems, we are lagging,” Odigha said.

He said that countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo is expecting 250 US dollars while Indonesia is expecting 1 billion US dollars.

“And they look at Nigeria as giant of Africa and they can come up robustly to see how they can access money from the forest dimension and use it to mitigate the impact of climate change.”

“The REDD programme is not only being pursued by the UN-REDD programme, the World Bank supported Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF). It is much more readily detached to a cash awarding facility.

“They have a lot of programmes. What of the Forest Investment Programme (FIP), the Carbon Fund.These are all programmes that are pre-condition that you must honour the agreement you have entered then you can access these funds to help your people. So that is the risk of us missing out,” he said.

He said that should Nigeria miss this opportunity if the international community should back out.

Odigha said: “These are funds meant for the people and these structures are being getting REDD ready is to put structure in place to avoid benefit capture by the elite class.

Ordinary if we really want development that is development that will really impact the people, we should go for it and that is what we are advocating.

“These are funds that cannot easily be diverted. Any government that is pro people and wants to help its people should go for this development
package.