By Wendy Nweke

The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), has requested the inclusion of Nigeria in the G7’s Climate Partnerships List for the co-creation of a Just Energy Transition Partnership.

According to him, this will enable the country’s Energy Transition Plan to achieve its set target by 2060.

The plan requires $410bn, which translates to an additional $10bn in annual spending.

Buhari also demanded urgent and decisive climate action from the countries that are most responsible for the emissions that cause climate change.

He said this on Monday on the sidelines of the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Egypt, dubbed COP27.

Represented by the Minister of Environment, Mohammed Abdullahi, the President stated that actions concerning climate change taken today and over the next few decades would determine the fate of future generations and the planet.

He said, “This year, we have witnessed disastrous extreme weather events from terrifying wildfires in the United States, to unprecedented heat waves in India, Pakistan, and Europe, to intense floods in my country, Nigeria,. From early summer till now, devastating floods have affected about 33 states in Nigeria, displacing over 1.4 million people, destroying over 100,000 hectares of farmland and causing about 600 deaths. In addition, we are witnessing increased desertification, erosion, and pollution in the country; the impacts of which are too severe to ignore. These glaring climate signals indicate that we do not have the luxury of time when it comes to the impacts of climate change,” he said.

The President lamented that Africa, which had contributed the least to both historical and current emissions, was facing climate impacts to a disproportionate degree.

He said, “As will be strongly demanded here at COP27, we need to see urgent and decisive climate action from the countries most responsible for the emissions that cause climate change. We cannot afford any more delays; our people and nations are on the line. The blame game should stop, affirmative and positive commitment to address these challenges must begin now.”

Buhari stated that while climate change was getting focused on, there was the need to consider the energy poverty in Africa.

“These energy deficits have staggering quality and length of life ramifications. For instance, the clean cooking deficits lead to about 500 million premature deaths from household air pollution in Sub-Saharan Africa annually, and due to the electricity deficits, half of secondary schools and a quarter of health facilities in the region have no power.

“African nations, and in fact most developing countries, must balance contributing our quota to the global climate response with resolving our significant energy needs. The clean energy transition is perhaps our main tool to achieve this. As we sought to scale our climate mitigation efforts, the Federal Government of Nigeria recognized the need for an extensive clean energy transition while providing sufficient energy to meet the needs of the 92 million Nigerians without access to electricity and the 175 million Nigerians without access to clean cooking solutions,” he said.

Source:punchng.com