Date: 2013-12-12

Today, the National Assembly Intervention on the Clean Cooking Initiative will be officially launched as part of marking the 4th edition of Nigeria Renewable Energy Day (NIREDAY) holding at Nicon Luxury Hotel, Abuja by 9am.This intervention by His Excellency Senator Bukola Saraki, the Chairman Senate Committee on the environment and ecology brought through the budgetary appropriation is expected to continue until the lives of several rural energy-energy poor Nigerians are impacted positively.

The Senate Committee on Environment & Ecology believes that new initiatives like NAICCI require the support of government to help create an enabling environment through less market distorting interventions that would attract investments in the sector. The project is targeted at the rural energy-poor woman who is most vulnerable to the effects of kerosene and fire wood.

It will be recalled that Senator Bukola Saraki was appointed by Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves as a member of its leadership council in March 2013. The council is a public-private partnership formed during the Clinton Global Initiative in September 2010 by the former United States Secretary of States, Hilary Clinton.This is Senator Saraki noble contribution to the clean Cooktoves and fuel movement aimed at supporting the framework for the initiative as a work in progress in order to accommodate the fast evolving cooking technologies that we currently experience globally.The distinguished Senator is of the opinion that Nigeria is ripe to have a climate change law. The development of Climate Change mitigation and adaptation policies and legislations as well as an emission reduction strategy may be sustainable vehicle needed to help Nigeria develop a low carbon economy. He reiterated that measuring progress in the clean cook stoves sector through the development of performance metrics through robust data collection to support the evidence base is essential. Government must continue to raiseawareness about the risks of exposure to dirty cook stove smoke, show effort to scale-up through favorable regulatory and policy environments, as well as devise ways of acquiring innovative finance to unleash clean cook stove entrepreneurial potentials in Nigeria.

Senator Saraki affirmed that the idea behind the project is to motivate other National Assembly members to foster the adoption of clean cookstoves in their constituencies so as to positively impact on the health of women who have to contend with respiratory infections and ailments due to indoor air pollution and smoke inhalation. He said further at our fast depleting forest and consequences on climate change would be preserved if the idea can be managed sustainably.