UN Security Council to visit Nigeria over humanitarian crises

Members of the United Nations Security Council will visit Nigeria in the next two weeks to assess the humanitarian crises in the North East.

Outgoing Minister of Environment and United Nations Deputy Secretary General, Amina Mohammed, disclosed this while briefing State House correspondents after the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting presided over by the Acting President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo.

Speaking on the gains Nigeria will be expecting from her engagements as United Nations Deputy Secretary General, Mrs. Mohammed said the team will be visiting the Boko Haram ravaged North East to have first-hand information on the effect of the insurgency and what the current administration has done in the region.

According to her, “in the next two weeks or so, the UN Security Council, should be visiting Nigeria and when it does, we will be showing them exactly what the president has been highlighting and that nexus between poverty, conflict and climate change.

“They will visit the North East and they will see some of the root causes of (why) our young people are being to dragged to a life of terrorism.

“We can talk about health and there is global fund and there are institutions in the UN that will help us to strengthen what is happening on nutrition on children, mental health and several aspects which can be better coordinated.

“So being there, you are closer to some of the decision making. We do have some major challenges that are considered of concern to the global village, so bringing from Nigeria the real issues and some of the solutions that we know better than others, will give us, I believe, an edge in trying to bring resolutions to those situations.”

Speaking further on the valedictory FEC meeting held in her honour, she disclosed that the ministry had taken a memo to council for the ‘Revised National Policy on Environment’ which was first formulated in 1991 and last revised in 1999.

She disclosed that the second revision is 2017, adding that “it has become imperative that we have this new policy framework because what we really wanted to do is to capture some of the emerging issues that has come since then as regards to environment.”

“These concerns issues such as climate change, coastal erosion, desertification, erosion, pollution and insecurity, which has been exacerbated by the struggles for environment resources. We see this in country at all levels.

“What the policy does is to look at all the different inter-sectoral issues that we have whether it is with water, health, power, agriculture and bring them in to have a multi-sectoral response. It went into an extensive stakeholder consultation; a greater part of the new policy environment sees partnership with the private sector and with the communities as absolutely essential to the sustainability to our environment.”

She disclosed that the Council also looked at the importance of funding of many of the issues that have come out, so the policy itself looks to find many ways looking at innovative ways for financial framework to bring resources to the different aspect, that is talking about power, renewable energy is a big opportunity for us as we exit out of fossil fuels.”

“However, the cost is usually not reachable for the majority of people so finding new ways of bringing that to fruition and making sure that the policy takes care of it.”

“There are many issues within the new policy environment that today that many Nigerians are asking what we are doing about it.”

“The regulatory agencies coming together to look at the issue of deforestation which is now at an larding rate which is below five per cent, the issues of waste and how we can look at the producers responsibility, where we can see plastics actually recycled and not littering the environment.”

Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, also disclosed that Council approved a memo to construct the Cameroon-Nigeria border link bridge at Ikot Efiom under the African Development Bank support for improving relationship between Cameroon and Nigeria as a post-ICJ judgement over Bakassi.

According to Fashola, “FEC approved that bridge as part of the link road between Enugu and Abakiliki way which is already completed and part of larger Lagos-Mumbasa Highway. $38 million for the construction contract and $9 million for the consultancy and this was done under ADB procurement guidelines.

“We also presented a memo for the resuscitation and completion of the Kaduna Eastern bypass highway, which was started in 2002 and was initially planned to have been completed within three years but 15 years after, it remains uncompleted.

“Council also approved the programmes to complete it now and is a 50 kilometer highway and dual carriage way with nine bridges over rivers and rail crossings there.”

“The project was first awarded in 2002 was N16 billion, we have had to get approval for N22 billion verbatim and so that takes that project cost now to N32 billion.

The contractor was paid N5.5 billion in 2002, if we had paid the contractor N11 billion then when exchange rate was N109 it would have fetched us $96 million, if you multiply $96 million today even at official rate of N305 is now N29 billion.”