By: Mayen Etim
He stated this at a one-day sensitization programme on the role of Persons With Disability in fight against climate change in Nigeria, organized by a Nongovernmental Organization, (NGO) Beyond the Borders of Disability Initiative, held in Kaduna on Thursday.
According to him, Nigerian leaders for a long time have sat on a roundtable discussing climate change over nice foods and wines and have not done something serious about the issue.
The Africa’s Disaster Risk Reduction champion said the way climate change is threatening Nigeria is like a house built on a beach sand that can collapse any time.
Going down the history lane, Dr. Joda said Nigeria started experiencing most devastating disasters such as; floods, fire outbreaks, landslides, earthquake since 2012, and were all unreported.
“These incidents have amplified the urgency in understanding that we are living in danger. A danger posed by climate change and we need to understand that there are problems right in front of us.
“The media calls it natural disasters, but I say no disaster is natural. If then disasters are natural, that means something is driving them – human activities, and so what are those human activities driving these disasters,?” he queried.
Speaking further, Dr. Joda said since these years of evident disasters in Nigeria, no one has been able to come out either directly or through policy framework by the policy makers to say these are climate driven disasters.
“We are quick to plunder our forests causing lots of deforestation which result to desertification, which in turn is causing land degradation, fueling erosion and has affected our crops and agricultural food production systems to completely fail.
“The vast open degraded lands are creating new weather variability leading to uncertain weather conditions which are creating either windstorms destroying homes, communities and further go down to drive excessive weather activities that brings flooding earthquakes and different kinds of disasters threatening human existence.
“If we look around our communities, there are streets without gutters. The streets with gutters are inundated with plastic bottles and bags. When the rain falls the runways are all full, it cannot channel the waters straight into the lay land or lowland causing flood in homes. And you say these disasters are natural? No they are not!” he said.
Dr. Joda called on Persons With Disability to start advocacy campaign on climate change because they are at the receiving end.