The Unsustainability of Extractivism
Extractivism lies at the base of the climate and food crises. It is propelled by a complex of mentalities and power differentials that are basically self-reinforcing in practice, underwriting and rationalizing socio-ecol…
COP27, the Loss and the Damage at Injury Time
The recently concluded COP27 at Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, did not rise beyond the low bars set by previous editions. Except for Loss and Damage, the answer to the question as to what was gained at the COP is blowing in the…
Imagining a Future with Hope
At Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), we always aim to understand the events unfolding around us by examining their roots and varied manifestations. Our fundamental position is that the crises the world faces are…
Real Climate Solutions Exist
The ravages of climate change on Africa and other vulnerable territories are by now clear to all who care to pay attention except those in sheer denial. Extreme weather events like the reoccurring flooding episodes in th…
Oil Theft Pollutes Our Nation
We have heard sordid tales and seen utterly despoiled environments, but the official declaration that a 4 kilometres pipeline was built in the ocean and illegally operated for 9 years through an offshore platform without…
Seeing Red with the Blue Economy
Without a plan, and a redefinition of development and progress, we may end up in a cemetery of junk technologies and bequeath to our children stranded assets in equally stranded communities. A mindless implementation of …
Not an African COP
Calling COP27 that will be held in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, an African COP is simply a tale that has a tail aimed at presenting the false notion that this is an opportunity to solve the ravages of climate change on the co…
Waving off Climate Action in the Heatwaves
Climate change is a result of human activities with reference to production, movement, and consumption of goods. A whole lot of these goods are products of transformation of natural resources, not to meet the basic needs…
Waking from the Fossil Nightmare
The Niger Delta is a territory under siege. This siege did not begin today. It didn’t begin yesterday. The siege has been on prominent from before the 15th Century. The siege has disrupted our ways of living, our communi…
The Ikarama Paradox
There are communities in the Niger Delta that would compete to have the dubious notoriety of being the oil spills capital of the world due to the regularity of oil spill incidents they experience. Ikarama community in Ye…
Fiddling while the Planet Burns
The third report to emerge from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the span of eight months has again exposed the folly of humankind on its addiction to dirty energy sources. The report clearly shows…
Oil, Rot and Divestment
The current drive by oil companies such as Shell and ExxonMobil to divest from onshore and shallow water oil fields or even to leave completely brings up very serious issues. If oil companies drilled the Niger Delta with…
Time for a Peoples’ COP
As COP26 went on, there was a parallel Cop26coalition’s people’s summit centred on real climate and devoid of vested fossil interests. It exposed COP26 to be a Conference of Polluters, Conference of Profiteers or Confere…
What After Oil
Good morning, distinguished participants in this Public Forum. I have the privilege of welcoming us all to this event which is organized by the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Foundation in partnership with Health of …
Coastal Communities Under Threat
Climate change and variability in Nigeria is starkly illustrated in the northern and southern regions of Nigeria by desertification and coastal erosion respectively. This is so because attention is often focussed on thes…
