MY EXPERIENCES WITH ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES, YOUTH WORK AND PROFESSIONAL OBJECTIVES

Any successful man is being motivated with his passion on what he believes is of utmost importance to him. Thus, he sets a SMART goal for himself and equips himself with guiding principles that will sail him through the journey to his destination. As a young man, I am of the opinion that through my professional career, development can co-exist with environmental sustainability. Hence, my professional objective is defined as: “to establish a team-work relationship with reputable corporate organisations and contribute my strengths and skills in attaining the organisation’s golden goals and objectives towards achieving sustainable development.”

Professionally, I am a trained Mining Engineer. The profession is multi-disciplinary, including elements of civil and mechanical engineering, geology, metallurgy, economics, environmental management and, health & safety. During my internship, while as an undergraduate in university, I had opportunity to work with a quarry company in areas of mine design, mine ventilation and environment. As mining engineering relates to extraction of minerals from Earth, its cycles of operations directly affect the mine environment, climate, and its in-habitants. My experiences as a graduate trainee have really afforded me opportunities to develop my knowledge, understanding, and interest in environment and sustainability.

In addition, through the Nigeria’s National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme, I am currently working with the Ministry of Environment and Mineral Resources, Uyo, Akwa-Ibom State, Nigeria. My department deals with supervision of the operations of oil & gas companies within the state, in relation to their environments. Akwa-Ibom State falls within oil & gas rich Niger-Delta region of Nigeria where petroleum drilling operations are conducted almost all hours of days. I use to be part of ministry’s teams that pay site visitations or field inspections to the environmentally affected areas during the petroleum explorations. Such issues we deal with include oil spillages, harmful and wasteful gas flaring, energy renewal, etc. All these contribute to the Climate Change problems! In fact, my passion in this area of study has made me to make up my mind to do my post-graduate studies on any Climate Change related areas of specialisation, such as remote sensing, environmental resources management, renewal energy, etc.

On youth matters, I was the General Secretary to the Akwa-Ibom State NYSC-MDGs Awareness Creation Club. As we all know, MDGs has eight goals and I have personally initiated a development programme on goal seven: Ensure Environmental Sustainability. The initiative has to do with the grassroots sensitisation of people on the challenges of Climate Change. Likewise, as a member of the Nigerian Youth Climate Change Coalition, I am one of the Nigerian youths that attended Nigeria’s policy dialogue conference on the road map to Copenhagen Conference in Denmark, later this year. It was organised by the Special Climate Change Unit of the Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Environment, in collaboration with Heinrich Boll Stiftung (HBS). It was held in Abuja, Nigeria, from August 20th – 21st, 2009. As a member of the Nigerian Youth Parliament, the parliament is also doing its best towards educating the Nigerian youths on why we have to stand against the present and future challenges and consequences posed by the Climate Change.