By Abdullah Adeyanju Binuyo
When world leaders gather in Belém, Brazil this November for COP30, history will be made. For the first time, the UN climate summit will take place in the Amazon, the lungs of our planet and home to one in ten known species.
Belém is not a backdrop but a statement. The Amazon is where the fight for climate stability may be won or lost.
For Nigeria, Belém is a mirror. The Amazon is to Brazil what mangroves, savannas, and deltas are to Nigeria: ecosystems of immense value but under relentless threat from short term economics and weak governance. The parallels are striking.
In Brazil, deforestation advances despite global concern. In Nigeria, climate disasters are already here.
Maiduguri’s flooding, triggered by the Alau Dam overspill and worsened by ignored warnings, buried homes and livelihoods. Alongside the nationwide floods of 2022 that displaced more than a million people, these events show how fragile ecosystems and fragile governance combine to devastating effect.
The Climate Change Act of 2021 was meant to close this gap. Hailed as Nigeria’s climate constitution, it created the National Council on Climate Change (NCCC) to coordinate ministries, set carbon budgets, and guide Nigeria’s 2060 net zero pledge.
Yet four years later, the Council is remembered less for leadership than for absence. Absence of continuity, absence of budgetary stability, and absence of integration across sectors. The gap between ambition and action mirrors the gap between bold declarations and submerged communities in Borno State.
Into this vacuum steps Temi Majekodunmi, the newly appointed Director General of the NCCC. An expert in climate finance, she inherits a fractured institution. Her task is formidable: restore credibility to Nigeria’s climate governance and present a coherent agenda at COP30.
The urgency is not abstract. It is written in the floods of Maiduguri, the dunes of the north, the collapsing coastlines of the south, and the fragile infrastructure tested by every storm.
The Act was ambitious, mandating carbon budgets, a Climate Change Fund, and alignment with the Energy Transition Plan. But instability derailed it. Three leadership changes created confusion, and the statutory Council meeting has never been convened.
Ministries pushed conflicting agendas: one advancing gas monetization, another renewable energy targets, another struggling with adaptation. The crisis deepened in December 2023 when the Budget Office misclassified the Council and cut its federal allocation.
Climate governance was sacrificed to short term priorities, influenced by political settlement theory, just as the United States once exited the Paris Agreement, yielding to the consensus of the elite. Meanwhile, Nigeria’s Energy Transition Plan, unveiled in 2022 with global acclaim and requiring ten billion dollars annually, remains without financing.
These shortcomings carry immense stakes because Nigeria is not marginal in the climate story. It is both vulnerable and strategically central. Advancing desertification in the north drives migration and insecurity, testing the absorptive capacities of forced host communities.
Erratic rainfall in the central belt undermines food production. Rising seas threaten southern cities and oil infrastructure. In the Niger Delta, saltwater intrusion and floods displace entire communities. Climate change in Nigeria is not a distant prospect but a daily crisis.
This is why Majekodunmi’s appointment carries such weight. Her role is less about technical detail and more about influence, securing presidential attention, negotiating budgets, and pushing climate action across government.
Nigeria’s problem is not ambition but execution: the ability to turn pledges into bankable projects, attract finance, and deliver resources where needed. She must restore credibility by convening overdue meetings, reconciling overlapping legal frameworks, and building financial pathways that unlock domestic and global funds. Without these shifts, Nigeria will keep producing polished but hollow climate plans while droughts, floods, and displacement intensify.
Belém itself offers both caution and opportunity. Brazil’s proposed Tropical Forest Forever Facility, a 125 billion dollar plan to reward forest conservation, could reshape climate finance. Nigeria should pay attention. Its mangroves, savannas, and forests are also vital carbon sinks yet remain undervalued.
If Brazil can mobilize billions for the Amazon, Nigeria must design similar mechanisms for its ecosystems. But contradictions persist.
Brazil promotes climate leadership while expanding oil drilling. Nigeria mirrors this paradox, promoting gas as a transitional fuel while pledging net zero. The answer is not concealment but transparency, channeling hydrocarbon revenues into renewables, adaptation, and resilience while aligning strategies with global sustainability.
What Nigeria needs is not piecemeal fixes but a Governance for Sustainability Reform Framework. This must embed climate considerations into development planning, compel ministries to align under the Council’s authority, tie federal allocations to climate responsive budgeting, strengthen accountability across all levels, and ensure civil society, private sector, women, and youth have a voice. Such reforms would make Nigeria a credible partner capable of attracting finance, building resilience, and restoring trust.
COP30 will test Nigeria’s credibility. For too long, the country has been present at summits but absent in delivery. The world now expects evidence: restored funding for the NCCC, progress on the Energy Transition Plan, and clear mechanisms for adaptation finance.
Belém could be a turning point, but only if Nigeria arrives not as a petitioner but as a leader of the Global South, demanding financiers honor their pledges while proving that its own institutions can absorb and deploy funds effectively.
If COP30 is remembered as the Amazon COP, Nigeria must ensure it is also remembered as the summit where Africa’s largest economy reclaimed its climate credibility. The Amazon may provide the lungs of the Earth, but Nigeria must show it has the political will and institutional muscle to protect its people. The floods of Maiduguri and the overspill of the Alau Dam remind us that climate change is not theory but a lived national emergency.
As the world counts down to Belém, Nigeria counts down too, not just to a summit but to a test of whether its new climate captain can steady the ship and chart a course from vulnerability to resilience.
Dr. Adeyanju Binuyo, (adeyanju@teranpico.com), a techpreneur, strategist, and expert in climate and sustainable development, writes in from Abuja.
