The Senate on Tuesday raised alarm over looming environment hazards in some parts of the country, urging President Muhammadu Buhari to increase allocation to the sector.
The former Deputy President of Senate, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, who is the Chairman, Senate Committee on Environment, made the appeal at the budget defense of the Ministry of Environment.
He noted that the paltry sum of N8.9 billion allocation to the ministry and its agencies every year did not show the sincerity of the Federal Government to tackle the nation’s environmental challenges.
“I just want to appeal that when you go back, tell the President, Vice President, the Secretary to the Federal government, Finance Minister, that we are not satisfied with the amount of money that is allocated the Ministry of Environment.
“I also want to appeal that the Ministry and its agencies on the need to insist that their budgetary allocations should improve. We are only here to help but you need to start the fight.
“Create the awareness, through seminars, summits and we will be there to speak until Nigerians begin to listen to know that environment is as important as the health, it is as important as Aviation and other key sectors of our economy.
“I want to make this clear so that the authorities will know the danger posed to us by their negligence. You don’t deal with victims of environment hazards by sending palliatives every year without tackling the menace from the root.”
Ikweremadu said Nigeria should emulate other countries by considering the lives of other people.
“Erosion is a major environmental threat in our country and by 2030, we are going to have a problem. Even the deductions that are being made from ecological funds are only being released for political considerations.
“They are not being implemented the way we should. If you go to Saudi Arabia and see how they deal with their erosion control you will marvel but here it is a different cattle of fish.
“In all parts of the country, there are major environmental challenges. In parts of the North, there is desertification; in the South, there is coastal erosion, in the South East there is erosion, yet the federal government has not shown sufficient political will to bring them under check.”
He added, “This is an opportunity for me to appeal to the federal government to find a way of increasing the budget of the Ministry of Environment and its agencies, to enable us to meet international standards and join the rest of the world.
“There is a major environmental challenge threatening all of us. The fundamental challenge is epidemic. So, unless we join the rest of the world in dealing with it everybody will go down”.
Earlier in his remark, the Minister of Environment, Mohammad Abubakar, while lamenting over the paltry allocation to the ministry and its agencies, pleaded with the legislators to prevail on the Finance Ministry to review the ministry’s allocation.
Abubakar noted that the estimated N8.9 billion to the ministry and its agencies in the 2021 budget, was grossly inadequate to tackle environmental challenges in the country and pleaded with the committee to help secure an upward review of the ministry’s budget.
