 Welcome to the advocate, your Sunday reminder that important conversations are among the necessary tools for a saner society. I will be talking on climate change is not foreign affairs. We will be talking about business opportunities and sustainability in Nigeria, a case of mobile money. We will be talking about seeking for daily bread in the POS business. We will be right back after the break. Welcome back. The scenes of devastation from flooding are all around us now. The house almost covered to the rooftop in water. The car submerged. Punish of floating along to nowhere. Canals flying major residential zones across the country. Taking over by rivers of flood. At the bottom of all this is the impacts of climate change. It is even said that this is just a thought of what is to come. The current tragedy joins others such as the increasing the situation of the Sahel, which is expanding rapidly into the northern reaches of the nation. Leading to a crisis of availability of water and even open conflict. The Boko Haram insurgency and others like it flourish in the shadow of all this. As we approach the coming election, presidential candidates have been confronted by the press and others with the issue of climate change. The common reaction is that it is not our problem. That it is the problem of the west who wants to prevent us from industrializing and that nothing can be done by us if there is no funding from the west. All these are reiterants. Climate change is with us affecting us, our relatives, our people. We call upon our politicians, particularly presidential candidates to pay serious attention to putting forward plans to deal with the impact of this course that our people are daily experiencing. It is noteworthy that until recently, none of the presidential candidates visited any of the communities afflicted by the flooding to come straight with them. It is beyond search. So, I will look at this from two perspectives. So, I will break it down to the people and the government. And from what you said, you look at government in the local aspect and in the foreign aspect. So, I will start from the foreign so that I can come back to the local. For the foreign, if you look at the international climate change law, it might not be applicable to our adaptation to our country at the moment because we are not there yet. There are some clauses, just like one of the presidential candidates says you cannot poison a noted oil or something like that, only communion for a rat to come and just like you want to kill. So, the statement is actually for a foreign aspect of climate change. So, if a condition is saying stop the production of coal, stop these, what is the major source of revenue for Nigeria? It is still the gas, the fuel and so on. We are asking them to stop what alternative. So, what we are trying to tell us that indeed for us to move to be more independent, we are asking us to continue depending on you. It is not done anyway, right? So, we are far from it. So, that is not something you want to poison us in our own way. We know that this thing is not good for us. So, that is on that part. Nevertheless, when you look at it in a local aspect in government, we also need to look at government enforcing one, orientating aggressively the populace, the citizen. Now, you have people who are doing building houses, that are building houses on road network. They are not following the standard plans. You have some planning saying stop work here, do this, and people are still doing it. They are not proper drainage, right? And even before leaving aside the dam water, even if there is heavy rain pour, you see a lot of water on the road. But when the water comes up, what is it coming up with? We don't actually take cognizance of this that are blocking the drainage that we have. There are some houses that they will build. They will build that I want to occupy all my land. Places that you need to put drainage. Even inside streets, people don't care. Do you understand? So, the government has to first of all, educate the citizen aggressively. We have not been saying that the National Education Centre is doing a lot of awareness that they are expected to do. Then, aside that, we the citizen also need to abide. It's not only when you occupy all the road or you take your wastage and put it inside drainage and we need to take responsibility. That's for my own side. Before I come back, it is the electionary issue but it is the electionary campaign and it is good that this is coming to the fore. And we have all asked for issue-based campaign and it is good that this is coming as a litmus test for all the presidential candidates. Many of them, in your submission, you said how many of them have even taken time to visit these ravaged zones to see the damages and also commiserate. Whatever you are offering us or you are planning to offer us, we should begin to see signs of this now. In terms of how you react, in terms of the policy that you plan on giving to us ensuring that this flooding is combated. The last time we had such flooding is in 2012, if I recall. And then, I mean, this year's 31 state out of the 36 states have already flooded. I mean, it is really devastating and then we need to now see the human side of all our presidential candidates. At some point, they need to also hot the campaigns. I mean, how do they even want to go about the campaigns if they cannot even get to these areas and cities where they need to also take their campaigns to. So, we need to also see from them how they intend to tackle all of these issues that has to do with, I mean, our attitude, the human attitude. I mean, they need to offer leadership. It is beyond 10 people don't put your waste on the roadside and all of that. You need to also ensure there is enforcement beyond the policies, beyond all the talks there must be enforcement. We have all the laws in this country but we have issues with enforcement. How do we enforce all of this to ensure that we do not have a repeat of this. My issue particularly with the presidential candidates was that climate change has two levels. You have the global climate change issue which affects all of us in the world which relates to let us not destroy this planet in which we are living because, I mean, if all of us emit gases we put chemical in the air we are eventually going to die. That's one aspect but there is the other aspect where it is already having effect right now on us, on our people our people are suffering it. You can see the effect of the certification. Some even say that this Boko Haram warfare is a battle for resources a battle of people who have been disenfranchised who have nothing to live on. So we need to attend to you have a state like Israel which has turned desert into very arable land you have seen a lot you have other countries which are turning disaster into opportunities so the point I am making is many of these presidential candidates did not address the issue that affects us they just went on the global level we have to first think of our people anytime the issue comes that is global the first thing you do is you address it to yourself then the global one will come later. I think we also have issues to look at how our democracy has evolved we will see that in the last 24 years we still talk about the same issues of power of roads of education of poverty so you can imagine the kind of manifestos some of our candidates and their parties have so I mean before you even talk about the global issue we have some primary issues that need to attend to so when we will bring climate change issues to them it becomes something that is even bigger than them in some aspects because what we are even still talking about is how to take children the art of school to them I mean to sort security issues so climate and global warming issues is like you are taking them to the tertiary level of democracy we say no learn what is next after the break