Press Releases

Climate Change: Fashola Calls For Concerted Action Among Nations

Jun 1, 2009 - In the face of real threat to global environment by Climate Change, Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola (SAN), Monday called for concerted action by all nations of the world to save Planet Earth from possible extinction.

Governor Fashola, who spoke at the Lagos House, Alausa, while receiving the Regional Director of the British Council for Sub-Saharan Africa, Mr. Chris Brown, who paid him a courtesy visit, said all nations of the world need to work together now, more than ever before, to save the Planet.

He told his guest, “Whether American or British, I think we need to work together. Our planet is now bad news and we need to work in close contact today more than we probably have done in the past”.

According to the Governor, “We are looking at the challenges our planet faces environmentally today. It is not isolated to any one part of the world. Islands like the British Isles and Lagos and all of that are going to experience more challenges as we go ahead with large chunks of the Arctic breaking away, that mass of water will have to find space. This is one time it is important to empower more scientists to help us as we are destined to conquer nature”.

Stressing the need to empower the youth through education as a means to successfully battle Climate Change, Governor Fashola declared, “The answer to the future lies in the investment in the youths today”, adding, however, that there is need to change the Education curriculum in order to produce relevant professionals that would do the work successfully.

“The curriculum that we were left with a long time ago hasn’t changed, but the dynamics of our economy has changed so significantly that it is probably needing less accountants, less bankers and more environmental scientists because of the increasing globalization and increasing threat to public health today”, the Governor said, adding that because our planet is now borderless, the current Swine Flu ravaging parts of the world today could “pop its head anywhere”.

The Governor said the Lagos State Government has taken steps to empower the children of the State in this direction through setting up Planet Change Clubs in public schools in the State, pointing out that the children are more aware today than they were a year ago about the challenges to their planet and to their environment. “They are now in a position to enlighten people about power conservation and other activities to check Climate Change”, he said.

The Lagos State Government, he said, has adopted the philosophy to make the State’s Public schools “a destination for the most important stakeholders, the children and teachers, by providing the infrastructure they require and do all the necessary things to get the children to school.

“This year, more than ever before, we have said despite all our multi-dimensional challenges, issues of young people will take a lot of our time and that goes to Education, it goes to Sports. We have woken up the civic and leadership building institutions that seemed to have gone to sleep in voluntary associations for young people, the Red Cross, Boys’ Brigade Girls’ Guide, Boys’ Scout Movement, we have revitalized them all in all the schools in Lagos and introduced a compulsory Friday meeting as part of their curriculum and everybody must go to school in that uniform on Friday”, the Governor said.

Pointing out that Sport is a very important tool to make the children want to go to school, Governor Fashola added, “We start them and engage them in a seeming contradictory but developmental way from just doing book work to something they can do with less mental exertion and Sports provides that alternative”.

The Governor called for the re-awakening of the historic relationship between Nigerian and British leaders which, according to him, “has been on ice for sometimes’, adding that the State Government is looking at creating some kind of partnership with Britain especially at the higher level of Education.

Earlier in his remarks, the Regional director said his visit was to nourish the support which the Governor and Lagos State has been giving to the Council, saying this was demonstrated by the special attention which the Governor gave him and his entourage by suspending his Executive Council meeting to attend to them.

According to him, this gesture is more appreciated when considered from the enormity of challenges the Governor faces in the governance of a densely populated state like Lagos, challenges which some countries have to face both in size and population.

The regional director, who said he is overseeing 19 countries across Africa, described Nigeria as one of the Council’s most valuable supporters pointing out that such support has been made possible by people like Governor Fashola.

Recalling the meeting between Governor Fashola and the Chairman of the Council in London recently, Brown, who said the chairman, is passionate about Education and Sports, called for possible partnership between the Council and the State Government in these two areas as well as the Climate saying Sports is an important incentive in Education and training of Children.

Also in attendance at the occasion were the Deputy Governor, Princess Adebisi Sosan, the Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Barrister Opeyemi Bamidele, Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Mr. Olasupo Sasore (SAN), Special Adviser on Commerce and Industry, Mrs. Sola Oworu, Special Adviser on Special Duties, Mr. Kofo Abayomi, among other top Government functionaries, while the Regional Director was accompanied by the Country Director, the Deputy Country Director and the Director of Programmes of the Council who also spoke on Sports, Education, and a programme on Climate Change and Renewable Energy which the Council is organizing at the Lagos State University.