An environmental expert and a one-time Director General of the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (FEPA), Dr Goke Adegoroye, has urged the Federal Government to create an environment fund to subsume the current Ecological Fund and cover the entire spectrum of environment problems.
Dr Adegoroye said donations or green taxes from the corporate bodies could be paid into the environment fund, in furtherance of their corporate environmental responsibility.
He stated this at the 9th annual lecture of the Federal University of Technology Akure (FUTA), tagged, ‘From Research to Policy and Vision to Action: The Challenge of Environmental Management in Nigeria’.
He said, “Judging from the level of abuse in disbursement that took place in the last administration, the Ecological Fund Office should be relocated from under the SGF to the Federal Ministry of Environment, for oversight of the management of the Federal Government’s share of 1.46%.”
He added that that could be achieved with strong involvement of the National Council on Environment in determining intervention priorities, while retaining the power of the president to give final approvals on their disbursement.
He also called on governments at all levels to make concrete investment in the development of infrastructure for environmental management as the only viable and indispensable insurance against looming disasters.
“Environment agencies of the Federal Government should uphold and respect the rights of state environment agencies to monitor pollution, enforce environmental compliance and effect sanctions on polluting entities in their jurisdictions, using both state and federal laws and with funding support from the Federal Government,” he said.
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