Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Climate Change, who also doubles as the Vice-President of Globe Nigeria, Hon. Samuel Onuigbo has hinted that the much-awaited Climate Change Bill would be passed into law before the end of the year.

At a press conference held weekend in Abuja, the lawmaker representing Ikwuano/Umuahia North/South Federal Constituency of Abia State fingered climate change as one of the leading causes of the herdsmen-farmer crisis and Boko Haram insurgency, adding that greater understanding and solutions was being proffered to address the menace of change in ecological factors.

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 Northeastern Nigeria.

He explained: “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.

“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 noted that the legal framework of Climate Change Bill has been presented to the House of Representatives and had passed the second reading.

According to him, the Bill will provide a Legal Framework for the Mainstreaming of Climate Change Responses and Actions into Government Policy Formulation, Implementation and Establishment of the National Council on Climate Change and for Other Related Matters.

He further stated that the piece of legislation, “will expressly demonstrate our various commitments in the fight against all forms of environmental issues that are affecting the society."

Also speaking on the need for proper curricula in centres of learning on climate change, Onuigbo called on the Federal Government to reconsider the Presidential directive in reviewing the legal mandates of Nigeria’s universities of Agriculture and to maintain the original form, especially at the the Michael Okpara University of Agriculture Umudike in Abia State. (PRNigeria)

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