Agriculture is the highest contributor to global warming in Nigeria, a recent research conducted by the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology has revealed.

This research debunks the long-time general assumption that energy is the highest contributor to global warming.

Prof. Peter Ekweozoh, Director, Environmental Sciences and Technology, Federal Ministry of Science and Technology, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Monday.

He spoke with NAN at a workshop themed: “Green Economy Capacity Assessment Workshop” at the Federal Institute of Industrial Research Oshodi (FIIRO), Lagos.

The workshop was a partnership between the University of Reading, U.K, and FIIRO to brainstorm on how to improve the Green Economy and mitigate environmental degradation.

“A recent research by our ministry shows that the agriculture sector is the highest contributor to global warming in Nigeria and also the use of land, contrary to what we believed. Research has proven that it is not energy, and so, if we are able to stop the use of chemical fertilisers, burning of agricultural waste and turn them into usable products, our society will be better”.

“The Federal Government is already making efforts at having low carbon development programmes. The President has signed the Paris Agreement that took place in 2015. With this development, Nigeria will be able to enforce its own policy called the National Determined Contribution on Sea Waste Road Map 2030’’, he said.

Ekweozoh told NAN that the country was not deficient in having a policy framework that could attract donors to help in realising the Green Agenda policy but rather, the country needs personnel to carry out its policy.

“We are not bereft of a framework that can help us with the Green Economy; what we need is to put our policy framework together in order to attract foreign donors. We have up-to-date climate change policies and roadmaps”.

“In the implementation of the Green Economy policy framework, we need to coordinate the skills. We also need to close those gaps and then we will have a good shot at implementation of the policy. At the end of this programme we will start massive capacity building programme as a result of the gaps to fill,” he said.

Ekweozoh said that Nigeria had inaugurated a National Waste to Wealth Programme in 2015 which was aimed at addressing environmental degradation.

“In 2015, Nigeria signed National Waste to Wealth Programme to law. This programme is an inter-ministerial mission that seeks to address some attitudes which we need to change”.

“We also need to educate our people to know how to treat waste and stop throwing waste around. We need to put in place appropriate technology, facilities that will undertake the processing of mix waste because that is what we have. Just dumpsite everywhere, unlike what we have in the Europe which is technological land fills”.

“I believe once that is achieved, we will have the National Science Technology Innovation Roadmap 2030 which is supposed to drive development in all the sectors – agriculture, industry, tourism, water resources and energy,” he said. (NAN)