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.
