The Senate yesterday asked President Goodluck Jonathan to take steps to raise $14 billion to save Lake Chad from drying up.
This followed a motion entitled: “Urgent action to save the Lake Chad”, sponsored by Ahmed Lawan (Yobe North) and 40 others.
Although the lawmakers hailed the Federal Government for its financial and moral support to the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC), they underscored the need to raise the fund to undertake Inter Basin Water Transfer (IBWT) from the Ubangi River.
The upper chamber also resolved that the National Assembly should provide legislative support to the Federal Government to continue with its leadership role in the LCBC and quest for sustainable resuscitation of the lake, the promotion of peace, stability and security in the region as a foundation for a durable and sustainable development.
It urged President Jonathan, in consultation with the LCBC Summit Chairman and other leaders to champion the donor conference and constitute a robust team of eminent citizens drawn from the member-states to embark on a sensitisation programme of potential donors.
The Senate asked President Jonathan to provide financial and logistic support to embark on the sensitisation programme and organise the donor conference.
Lawan in his lead debate noted that Lake Chad is the fourth largest lake in Africa, with a surface area of about 25,000 square km in 1960.
He recalled that heads of governments of Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad came together in 1964 and established via the Fort Lamy Convention, the LCBC with the objective of harmonising the activities of member-countries for the management of the basin’s resources.
The lake, Lawan said, is a repository of bio-diversity, playing an important socio-economic, political and cultural role to over 30 million people in the four countries sharing border and providing habitat for a variety of wildlife, including migratory birds.
He noted that due to a combination of natural and human factors, the lake has been drying up over the last 50 years, leading to the reduction of the surface area from 25,000 square km in 1960 to about 2,500 square km.
The fear, Lawan said, was that the lake might disappear in the 21st century.
He noted that the drying up of the lake would plunge the sub-region into ecological and humanitarian crisis, with global consequences.
Lawan said the already high level of poverty in the region would further exacerbate and degrade the fragile ecosystem, thereby triggering mass population displacements as environmental refugees and worsening the social and security challenges in the region and beyond.
He said the challenge of the drying up of the lake led heads of government of member-countries of LCBC in 1994 to mandate it to explore options for resuscitating the lake to reverse the ugly trend.
Lawan noted that the Inter Basin Water Transfer (IBWT) from Ubangi River in the Central African Republic to the lake was identified as a viable option leading to a feasibility, which cost over $6 million.
The lawmaker said following a motion by the House of Representatives in 2004, the Federal Government under former President Olusegun Obasanjo contributed over $5 million of the $6 million required to fund the feasibility study.
Lawan observed that due to the favourable outcome of the feasibility study conducted by a Canadian firm, CIMA, the Heads of State of the LCBC member-states approved the IBWT in 2002 at a summit held in Ndjamena, Chad.
He said the feasibility study revealed that the IBWT was estimated to cost over $14 billion.
The LCBC secretariat, Lawan said, was mandated by the summit’s of Heads of State to convene a donor conference to mobilise the required funding from the private sector/international community and the member-countries for the execution of the investment plan.
The senator said he was concerned that the member- countries lacked the financial, technical and logistic capabilities to execute the project, hence the urgent necessity to mobilise support from the international community to save the lake from extinction and avert catastrophe.
Underscoring the fact that mobilising $14 billion is an enormous task, he raised the need for President Jonathan to initiate in consultation with the Summit Chairman and other Heads of State of the LCBC to put together a powerful team of eminent citizens from the member- states to go round the world and mobilise support for the IBWT project.
Most lawmakers including Senators Barnabas Gemade, Ben Ayade, Magnus Abe, Ayogu Eze, and Buka Abba Ibrahim, who contributed, supported the motion.
Ibrahim noted that if urgent action was not taken, the lake would disappear in 10 years.
Senate President David Mark described it as a necessary motion.
He noted that although the Federal Government was already doing something, “what we need to do is urge them to move faster so that the action will not be belated.”
