Biosafety in Shambles
We cannot afford to keep gambling with our biosafety. To do so is to set ourselves up for intergenerational consequences; needless to mention the current crises that are being exacerbated. Genetic modification and other …
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…
Learning for Change
The wise is a knowledge holder and keeper. Learning is a lifelong process. In other words, we never graduate from the schools of life as long as we are still on planet earth. We learn to walk, to speak intelligibly…
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…
Reject Seed Colonialism in Africa
It has often been said that one of the ways to colonize a people is by dismantling or subverting their culture. This pathway is also effective for building dependency and disrupting the systems that organically secures t…
By Me We Spoke
Stolen Across swollen waters To you, thousands of us were Pieces of wood, tusks, brass To tickle the fancies of heartless merchants and enablers of violence But you were wrong. A heist of brass and wood and ivory Murdero…
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…
COP26: Injury Time
12 years ago We were already in Injury Time Fighting for a temperature target of 1C Today Nature has been patient enough So patient not to call off the game Though the ball has left the pitch Nature has given human…
Accelerating Climate Action by Design
The theme for the World Habitat Day 2021, Accelerating Urban Action for a Carbon-free World, is a strong call on architects and all practitioners involved in the design and actualisation of the built environment and rela…
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 …
Politics of Turbulent Waters
The fact that Africa can be completely circumnavigated has advantages and disadvantages. One of the advantages is that the continent can be accessed by sea from any direction. This means that the seas can be a ready tool…
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…
