Cancun was not typically going to Copenhagen, the distance tells it all. Copenhagen had over 120 global leaders but Cancun was only full of top ministers who still heed the phone call of their bosses.  Copenhagen was the mix of  hype and hope where the world felt we would leap into a final compromise that resets the emission  levels of nations. Copenhagen has gone and with its hype. While Copenhagen produced a last minute accord, little did the world know that a Kyoto successor was subtly grafted into our minds.  Now while everyone wants a chorus mood for Kyoto, Japan and its ilk want the last minute Copenhagen Accord to creep in. 

Cancun won’t provide another binding deal with the tussle between Kyoto and Copenhagen agreement.  The Kyoto protocol was not been much successful  with US a major emitter opting  out and China not bound to cut its emissions. It is obvious that a new Post- Kyoto accord will definitely have to incorporate a bigger shared responsibility for China and other major polluters in developing countries. The question lies in how many years will we wait without a binding treaty with Kyoto expiring in 2012.

It is obvious that the emission cuts in the Copenhagen Accord were a bit substantial but making it not legally binding puts it in a voluntary mode.  It is clear that there hasn’t been a discipline mechanism over countries that erred in the Kyoto protocol framework. The question lies in that if we ditch Kyoto protocol for not legal binding treaty drafted by six countries, what’s the hope of the planet? It gradually looks like politics will triumph over the over the dire warning of science. We might have entered a time where we like grannies have to take a step at a time and forget the rush to save the planet. We might have seen the end of Kyoto and we can only expect an hybrid solution in the future. Why do global leaders give credence to skeptics that scientists and activists are crying more than the bereaved and we are just locked in another fool’s paradise?

Kyoto had its own problems with the controversial projects, hot air syndrome and non-inclusion of forests in the deal. I only expected some tweaks like inclusion of REDD, carbon market reform, substantial emissions cuts, global adaptation plans, accelerated technology transfer and large scale financial commitments to LDCs.

All we have now is another tussle between Copenhagen and Kyoto Protocol.  What the world is facing now shows that a multi polar world makes the global equation complex.Hope we are not locked a bureaucratic world that breeds inaction and narrow interests?  But for how long will this pendulum swing? We need to act fast.  Every  inaction makes the poison pill for incoming generations  more lethal. For now, the logjam over Kyoto and Copenhagen only prove that there is large gulf between science and politics.

Environmentalists and scientists have provided us damning proof of how our planet is warming and how emissions will pollute the breath of the unborn. Twelve months ago, the world was caught a web of anticipation feeling the hour of the salvation of the planet has come. The world leaders met last year in Copenhagen to articulate a framework that cuts down greenhouse gas emissions. Kyoto protocol that forms the agreement for carbon trading was expiring in 2012 and Copenhagen was seen has the last bus stop of hope to fix the climate. Last minute decisions were reached but were not binding.

That Kyoto treaty excludes critical issues like deforestation made Copenhagen treaty highly important. We were gradually inundated with possibilities of light in the horizon. China promised to half its emissions by 2020. India is set to cut his emissions by 24% and Obama in his lifeless cap and trade bill proposed a 17% global emission cut by 2020. All these represent a beam of hope, the hallmarks of Copenhagen but these critical issues might just be political statements.

The final Copenhagen Accord did propose short-term funding for adaptation in vulnerable countries but lacks essential details such as where this money will come from. As to the long-term finance, developed countries pledged to commit to a goal of mobilizing jointly US$100 billion a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries. The Accord also did not give an understanding who funds these financial targets making it look like broken aid promise. The REDD also was a given an hint of significance but how its ratified into the next set of carbon trading remains to be seen.


COP meetings are the sessions where global leaders thrash out policies negotiate deals and commitments on carbon emissions. Rather than they sit and pursue definitive solutions, global leaders carry so much politics narrowed to national interests and mostly especially with currency wars across the globe , it seems Cancun is too early for any exciting surprise.

The carbon trading system birthed by Kyoto Protocol has produced a multibillion dollar trading sector while actual emissions of green house gases has been in an upward trajectory. The negotiation for a new protocol has turned the Climate Change idea to another carbon pricing group with investment bankers, carbon traders, advisory desks, rating agencies and demons in last global financial crisis waiting by the sidelines. Rather than put a cost to nature and seek bottom to top action to affect behavioral change in individual and corporate practices, countries import politics to their gauge competitiveness or stringent rules that take decisions to a gridlock. Africa and their peers also wait for the share of the carbon trading funds with another begging bowl. No one considers the man – the most vulnerable species on earth and looming crisis for his grandchildren. I mean the one not ready to cut down its forests for food or a household sent into extreme poverty by a climatic disaster. Rather than the globe taking actions on core adaptation issues, we keep talking up carbon trading that encourages pollution in developed countries and provide funds for controversial projects in the developing countries.

China is the world largest emitter producing 40% of the world coal production to oil its engines. China had shown promises in Olympic green city and Dongtan (a potential green city) It is also a leading force in renewable energy . How will China see the climate change as a turf of the future where it needs be a shining example to stand a chance of the next World superpower? Will we continue to hear bickering that Developed countries due to their dismal carbon past should bear the brunt by providing finance? Or will China understand his dignified role, allow some concessions by also providing funding from its huge reserves and accelerate sustainable technologies that reduce carbon emissions?

Obama gave a thought provoking speech at Copenhagen. He has not gone far with his commitment that might not meet reality in a polarized America Congress? Facing the realities, America is the world largest debtor and will it continue to fuel carbon emission cuts through its taxpayer’s fund? Will anybody take America serious in Cancun with its promises in Copenhagen as its cap and trade bill is still lifeless? The European Union is speaking tough on the world emitters need to do more to help developing countries especially on technology transfer and community education. Do we expect to see a unified voice that also stands by its word? Brazil, India and Japan are also expected to make commitments but are we not rehearsing cliché in Mexico? Many of these countries still provide tax breaks to top carbon polluters, encourage oil subsidies and are only concerned in quarterly growth in conflict with environmental resources.

The problem does not lie in technology, markets or policies to churn out green technology. It lies in political will to understand that the hearts and mouths of global leaders mean the same. We know the world needs green computing, biotechnology, electric vehicles, renewable energy and carbon capture techniques and so on. These all represent a fraction of the possibilities that innovative minds cross-fertilized across the globe can birth.

It took Kyoto protocol five years to come to force with America’s notorious dissent. Will Cancun just be another place of understanding where we all agree on the problems again and postpone binding agreements? What will the reform on the likes of Nigeria who use illegal gas flaring projects to attract carbon finance and have an insufficient opaque ecological fund? Will there be a new agreed carbon credit scheme and cross border tax adjustments for countries with high carbon emissions?

Numerous questions as the Cancun Climate Change Summit begins. With too much politics in climate change affair, it gradually turns an advocate to a skeptic wondering if this not a Western construct to recreate another bubble. The world needs action the considers the survival of man – the steward of the global commons - not oratory, beautiful pix, gleaming smiles, half filled bottled water, roaring airplanes, protests all to be seen at Cancun.

Fellow Nigerians,

Thank you for your reaction to Ijeoma Nwogwugwu’s back page column of Monday 08 November 2010. The piece was based on misinformation and misrepresentation of what the Speaker actually said at a meeting between the Presidential Task Force on Power and the leadership of relevant Committees of the House of Representatives. He has therefore directed that his exact words as transcribed from video and audio tapes in his extempore speech at the meeting be made available for your information. Hope this will assist in forming your opinion on the write-up of Ms. Nwogwugwu. We believe she is working for some interests who want to corner PHCN for profit based on her position and what we know about her at Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE) where she was sacked.

Thank you for your interest in the Speaker and efforts aimed at solving the epileptic power supply in Nigeria.

“Well, we will do this, we will talk like this and the press will take pictures and they will go. Then we will sit down and have a look at what you brought. It is not going to be one hour session or two hours session. It’s going to be three weeks of brainstorming. That is the most official of it. I know it took you a while to get to the bottom of this and definitely it will take us a while to also understand clearly what is going on, since we were not consulted when you were putting this together. I think that’s the problem with this document. This power issue is not an Executive problem. It is government problem. Therefore the executives and the legislature should be sitting down to brainstorm even before this document comes up so that it can be our document not your document that you are now needing assistance on. We are not giving you assistance. We are doing our job and this is supposed to be our thing, so that everything that is responsible to make sure that this thing does not continue any more in our country. That is my first observation.

And my second observation is this: You will not be first to come with such project plan for power to come into our country, but I pray that you will be the last so that we don’t have to go through this process again. Because we spent a better part of this session looking at power sector in this House for almost two years. We came up with some conclusion that we forwarded to the executive. Till today I don’t know of any executive team that has consulted this House on that report. I know that the executive has spent more money on power since that time and yet there is no power, which means that the problem with our power sector may not have anything to do with money but has to do with consultation and working together to get this thing done. That’s first part. Second part is this: some people benefitting from the fact that there is no power and making ridiculous amount of money. Now how are you going to accommodate such people to make sure that the legal business they are doing based on the fact that there is no power through the sale of generators, Diesel etc? How are you going to make sure that those people are going to be carried along to make sure that whatever legal business they are making can be made through this process as well? Because otherwise there is no magic to this. I believe it is a multi- billion dollar business a year. It is not going to go away just like that. How are you going to partner with them? How are you going to partner with us? With these remarks I say good luck and God bless. I am interested in being part of the many sessions that will come after this so that we can get our country out of this mess.”

Rt. Hon. Dimeji Bankole’s extempore speech before proceeding to preside over the voting on Constitutional Amendment contrary to Ms. Nwogwugwu’s insinuation that he “walked out of the meeting”.

Africa has always been described as the laggard in global development race. Its multi- dimensional problems has created an economic and military burden to the rich countries. As the globe tries to bridge social inequality, Africa has a sympathy appeal as it has always been a recipient of aids and donations. African leaders have this miserly attitude years hopping from pillar to post seeking foreign assistance. Africa lost much of its cultural and economic identity to the visit of the colonial masters in 19th century.



Rather than the continent find a new identity like China,India and other emerging powers we have for long been tethered to this pitiful past.The colonial days as painted by Joseph Conrad in his book, Heart of Darkness depicts Africa as a land of slaves, rational and violent. This view is still held around the world as everyone takes a malnourished child, a stinking urban slum or dilapidated buildings as the profile picture of the continent.



Even with present challenges of leadership and scattered militia groups in the continents, Africa is gradually becoming the envy of the world. As Western markets gets saturated and Asians exhibits low consumption power relative to their production capacity, Africa creates the new global demand. Many developed and developing countries are innovating local products to meet the challenges of Africa. The Chinese is keen to expand its business empire and is looking for all sort of leadership to get acquainted with either Guniea, Sudan, Zimbabwe or even SouthAfrica. The globe now understands that there is demand potential in the African continent and also abundance of mineral resources that can fuel their engines of growth. It becomes obvious that with proper investments, millions of middle level class exist in Africa with average spending power of a global consumer.



The competition for African resources and its untapped potential has taken brought a lot of global brands to be identified with the continent. Some countries are already exchanging infrastructure such as roads, railways for Africa’s natural resources. It still looks like a long to shot for Africa to develop its own technology and ride on global waves of innovation to empower its people. It is obvious that the growth of the continent is not harped on sincere interest of Western and developing partners of Africa. Most are just ready to transfer technology and keep running their industries in overseas. They prefer to ship their products from foreign destinations and take as much capital flight out of Africa.



Though adoption of technology has really developed Africa and made its people global competitive, this is not the lasting solution to growth of Africa. The continent still has millions of young unemployed population who do not possess an inferior brain matter to their American, Chinese or Japanese counterparts. Africa has been stripped of its best brains through brain drain programs but we have to reverse such cycle that takes our best . With no development of the fundamentals of knowledge economy - science and management education- Africa might still be that laggard. It won’t command a respect if it does not develop its own brands or attract foreign brands for local investment.



Nigeria is a basket case. A country that has explored oil in past 54 years but has not been able to build a world class refinery manufacturing giant. Nigeria exports crude oil and takes back its finished products. The same also for Rwanda, Ghana , Congo who export coffee, copper, cocoa and finally have to import the finished products. It stems from not knowing how to transfer this natural resources in finshed products based in inadequate knowhow. It also behoves on Africa to take the challenge the emphasizes on local content and also builds strategic science, technical and management schools to train its own. Africa needs to grow its knowledge base and this starts bringing in world class education to engage the thoughts of the youths.



A lot of capital flight is lost to foreign schools as wealthy or opportuned Africans seek better and relevance education elsewhere. It is critical that MDG goals take primary education as the first goal but this goes beyond the knowing the basics. Africa needs to replicate global structures of education and allow more import of science than technology. Its needs to plough back its diaspora and give them enabling environment to excel. Globalization and the transfer of trade comes with creative destruction. Everyday technology is replacing traditional ways of weaving baskets, communication and other local trade, we need to look within to develop our own “continental champions”.



The new economy is of borderless knowledge and Africa has to get out for m dependence to development. We need the education that spurns innovation and world class university that turn research in business models. I mean the likes of twitter and Google which has reinvented the way global business is done. As the world is in search of the next Google of clean technology company that will bring the fossil fuel establishment to their knees, I sincerely wish it was African. It starts with no waiting for the West or Chinese like the revolutions of industrial machines, IT, electronics, now is the time to start engaging the thoughts of Africa to spurn the next big thing.

2020 will Nigeria take that leap to the midst to the giants? This is a typical question that roams in my spirit when government from a state of slumber gathers up voluminous reports, eleven man committee and multiple events to herald a new vision.

It‘s never wrong to dream, set goals, generate a strategy or recreate a vision that narrates a change process. It only turns to a huge joke when you consider antecedence of vision and how they have remained dreams accomplished in hope. Housing for All by 2000 by Shagari, Vision 2010 by Abacha, SAP by Babangida and presently the MDGs have littered our dustbin of dreams. It is clear we love the best things of the world. Our leaders see it in their globetrotting. We see the Dubai airport terminal, paved roads of New York, the manufacturing districts of Germany and Seoul. Our leaders know that nothing stops them from replicating these structures here, but we know they are also the brickwall to unleash such potential.

We want to be a top 20 economy in 2020 – the vision. As the Bible says, there is no man who wants to build a house that won’t count the cost. Such vision could have emerged from beer parlour banter or imagination of a nerd. The vision might follow trends of rotten in the dump if we don’t properly count the cost.

Every country in this globalised world is looking for competitive ways to remain an export engine or an outpost of global trade. The BRIC (Brazil, India, China, Russia) are using internal fiscal and trade policies to empower their people, tapping into their demographic strength to produce competitively. The oil rich emirates (Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Oman) are carving a liberal niche, building the biggest structures and developing strategies to make themselves an avenue of global trade and tourism.
If we look at the top twenty economies, they have found ways to grow their economy beyond natural resources. Though those resources are the feedstock to embrace new opportunities, they are maximally using it to power new sources of growth through innovation. Qatar has the biggest gas fields and wants to make itself the top choice investment destination. UAE has oil rich emirate of Abu Dhabi but it is developing “creative distractions” in Dubai and Masdar. To them, oil represents the fraction but it’s never the sum.

Top twenty own the biggest industries of the world, best sets of education, attractive financial industry and most importantly they tap into the creative energies of their people. The have diverse leadership ideologies but you see purpose in them as they guard their interests to remain competitive through job and value creation.
Nigeria according to Goldman Sachs has identified in next 11 economies with potential to bloom after the BRIC. We know potential remains static until a kinetic force pushes it. The question is where is Nigeria’s kinetic force? Where are our creative distractions apart from oil? We are blessed no doubt with a thriving population, a worry presently to Germany and Japan. We own natural resources chiefly oil, China would wish it had that. We now have an amazing statistics that 70 percent of the population is under 40, the greatest of all.

To be in the top twenty, the road begins with directing the energies of the youth. No laudable vision would work if we don’t fix the curricula, educational infrastructure, get our best to teach and develop next set of global companies. We can’t be lifelong import dependent nations, keeping Chinese jobs in Shanghai or software developers jobs in Hyderabad to be in top 20. We can’t be a top 20 with these green farmlands and still imports metric tons of rice and sugar from Thailand. We can’t keep importing finished oil products and managing technically inefficient refineries. We have a strong IT force but we are only trained as operators not inventors.

For a top twenty economy in 2020 when issues of green economy and sustainability will be the frontier, do we have strategies to plug in? Will we have a minimum of 40, 000 MW needed to power such economy and what will be the renewable input? In 2020, what will be our garage story like Google and Facebook that becomes a world super giant? What Nigerian brand would be built that will dot the world and develop a creative destruction to traditional business methods. How friendly will our business environment be and its competitiveness in terms of skill and cost?
It goes beyond statistics of economy shown in GDP growth, we need a measure of improved livelihood in per capita income. We need indices that mark up poverty, socio economic conditions, right infrastructure, trade and fiscal policies. We need a silicon valley full of venture capitalists that support budding ideas and bring it to fruition. We need to source for our golden minds in Diaspora and creatively engage them for transfer of knowledge and technology. We will allow slips and bankruptcy of emerging companies but in them great ones will emerge.

We can keep counting the cost for such top 20 economy that empowers it people. But with petty talk of politics such as zoning and cross carpeting, bureaucracy, national quota system and other multiple woes, this might be another vision. We need to find the right leadership to bridge the gap between potential and achievement. May be we need a Mao Zedong, Aquino, Lee Yuan Kew, Lula Da Silva, we really can’t wait. If our leaders are still not ready, I have absolute hope that with creative energies of the Nigeria as exhibited in 1st Creative Careers Fair, if we don’t get the moon , we should fall among the stars.