FRANK UKONGA LECTURE SERIES 5 CLIMATIC CHANGES & ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION: NEW THREAT TO HUMANITY. FOCUS ON RIVER NIGER FLOOD & SURGING ATLANTIC OCEAN.

FRANK UKONGA LECTURE SERIES 5

CLIMATIC CHANGES & ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION: NEW THREAT TO HUMANITY.

FOCUS ON RIVER NIGER FLOOD & SURGING ATLANTIC OCEAN.

The Human Race on a global basis is facing a new challenge that is fast destroying lives and properties far more than other causes of wars, AID pandemic and other deaths caused by accidents and natural attritions. The emerging new threats of force majore of environmental disasters demand urgent attention on National, Regional and global basis that all shareholders in local and international affairs should begin to focus seriously on how to solve the emerging challenges to mankind.

It has taken an alarming proportion that no continent is safe from the damages of rain, volcanic eruptions of land slide, storms, surging ocean, scourging heat, overflowing of river banks, winds, droughts, etc with its antecedent colossal devastating effects on communities destroying lives and properties and causing untold hardship to  human , animals and plants lives on a global basis.

These impacts negatively on agriculture as farmlands are washed away into the sea, the alluvia covering and the richness and fertility of the soil is also grossly affected which also affect the average yield of farmlands. In some cases of adverse drought the rain will just refuse to fall for decades which have afflicted Somalia and many Nations of central African Sub region for decades leading to death, ruins and grief of civilizations.

This aphorism of declining habitat of the world could be man made as in the emission of carbon monoxide by many factories of the advance industrial hemisphere which deplete the Ozone protecting layers of the atmosphere creating large holes into the usually uniform protective spread of this layer and exposing many regions to direct rays of the sun. This begin to generate secondary effects of overheating of the globe, orographic regional and local rainfall and storms, hurricanes and surging seas due to the melting of the glacial polar regions of the world caused by the overheating. With the above explanation it is obvious that the bulk of the problem was man made and could also be solved by man made solutions.

Urgently needed is a world conference on Environment and how to protect it from further degradations which should centre on how to limit or perhaps ban the emission of carbon monoxide in to the atmosphere and seek for alternatives for the factories that are responsible for this emission so that it can be a win- win solution. Here we need a new impetus in the aspects of Research and Development as well as in Research and innovation to be able to swim out of this albatross with our heads and dignity up as human beings. How do we explain to ourselves and future generations of human beings that we who inherited a safe, clean environment from our ancestors are leaving a dangerous unsafe world to the future generations of mankind due to our inability to tackle the problems we created?

Mankind have devastated the forest reserves of the world on a global basis because of our dependent on trees, shrubs, plants and animals that inhibits this large forest reserves for meat, pulp and paper, medicine, furniture and creating new cities and expanding old ones where forest are cleared to make way for human civilization and to retain that civilization to grater heights it is imperative we begin safe guarding the near extinction of wild life and animals, and begin to re afforest the world on a global scale.

This annihilating aphorism of global warming and its antecedent genocidal backlashes, since it is a man made problem can also be solved by a man induced solution. This will interpret to a global reforestation agenda to be declared by the United Nations and assisted in funding. The chemistry here is that plants takes in carbon dioxide through photosynthesis while they discharge oxygen into the atmosphere addressed to complete and secure the earth ecosystem. Global reforestations will translate to having more trees which will release more oxygen into the atmosphere that will combine with carbon monoxide that currently saturate the upper lithosphere and form carbon dioxide for plant consumption in that separate carbon circle and will decrease the volume of carbon monoxide and perhaps through complex chemical reactions the remaining oxygen can combine to form O3- ozone and increase back the ozone protective security of the planet earth. We must emphasize that despite the billions of dollars mankind has sunk into discovering any other forms of life and intelligence on a planetary basis has yielded no positive proof that aside from the Human Race and the planet earth no other planet, nor star is suitable for human habitation, so we have only this planet to call our own, and we must protect it by what ever means possible.

The Christian and theological doctrines of going to Heaven where there are many mansions will not hold water in this context because even the Gods will blame the Human Race for wasting away the earth planet  and want to people and dominate the Heavens. We must be cognizance that some civilization like that of the Atlantis and many others did submerged under water and were completely destroyed from creation, and as history repeats itself if mankind does not sit  up properly to address this issue of ecological and environmental degradation we will wake up one day and our civilization will be washed away by flood on a global basis as such the volume of water and spread of the seas surrounding the earth land mass is more than the entire land mass available to the Human Race and indeed in the schemes of things, safe for our intelligence, we are really minuscule.

On National and local Government scales we could alleviate some of the problems by pursuing an environmentally friendly policy thrust by the planting of trees policy, putting  up legislations on protecting forests and animals, curbing illegal poaching of the forests etc while on the sufficiency basis we could embark on dredging , widening the exiting water ways and building dams , embankments, reservoirs and underground water tanks to hold back the rivers from invading towns and river rhine civilizations. This will demand gigantic investment in canalization, re planning of cities to modern standard with drainage facilities to empty rain water, flood, ocean surges, and etc back into the canals for return to the oceans.

In the case of Nigeria where the River Niger overflowed its banks in 2012 destroying all the cities adjoining its banks the major opposition party of the Nigerian Federation Action Congress of Nigeria through its National Legal Adviser Dr Muiz Banire blasted the Ruling government of the PDP of President Goodluck Jonathan and all other PDP governments that have being ruling for the past 13 years of our democratic dispensation that they are partially to blame for this crisis as he alleged that the government of PDP did not do what should have been done in terns of building more dams on the river Niger and dredging it to hold more volume of water. And indeed water hycines and all forms of degradation have taken over the great River Niger in recent times.

While Prince Frank Ukonga a Presidential Aspirant of Social Democratic Mega Party /National Reformation Party,  major progressive political parties of the Nigerian Federation donated funds to alleviate the sufferings of the flood victims of the River Niger through two Associations of Ebira Voyan International and Ohiku Ebira  addressed to provide clothing, food and essential materials to the afflicted peoples. The President of the Nigeria Federation H.E. Goodluck Jonathan has also announced a donation of 17 billion Naira to assist the affected peoples. Also Governor Adams Oshiomhole and other Governors have also coughed out various sums of money to assist the people.

The consequences of this may impact negatively on farming and food harvest of 2012 of the Nigerian Federation and there is likely to be shortage of food products to the market as many farmlands have been washed away .Subsequently we need to invest in research and development in the agricultural segment to invent flood resistant seedlings as against the future. This flood will also affect industrial productivity, cause homelessness and redundancies of the production forces and affect the overall GDP of the Nigeria Federation in the 2013 fiscal year and ever in the next decade.