Dotun Roy
Follow the Money Network, Civil Society Organisation and other
major stakeholders in the development sector in Nigeria are working toward to
the effective implementation and equitable distribution of clean cookstoves for
women. The provision of Clean Cookstoves for rural women, a proposed scheme by
Federal Executive Council, which is to be implemented by the Federal Ministry
of Environment is aimed at among other things the purchase and distribution of
clean cookstoves and wonderbags for women in the rural areas, women with
disabilities etc.
At the stakeholders’ forum held today 3 March 2015 at the
Heinrich Boll Hall, Abuja, according to Oludotun Babayemi, Co-founder, Follow
the Money in his address at the meeting giving overview of harmful effects of
carbon from the accrued into human system said that recent statistics has shown
that in Nigeria alone, over 95,000 women die annually from smoke, cooking with
open fire according to the World Health Organization. Experts have stressed
this is the third highest killer after Malaria and HIV/AID.
He further explained the major essence of follow the money
network which is ensuring that funds that are being earmarked and disbursed for
public procurement are used for what they are meant for. “We groundtruth in
tracking these approved funds by the governments to ensure accountability and
transparency, we are working to see that these cookstoves get to those who need
them the most, which are women in the rural areas, women with disabilities
among others.
Nafisat Abubarkar, Head of Secretariat, Rural Women Energy
Security (RUWES) who spoke extensively at the meeting, said “RUWES as an
organisation has been working to see that women in the rural areas in Nigeria are
not being marginalised, we have equally gathered enough database that we are
currently working with” she said. She further stated that RUWES has developed a
monitoring and evaluation web based map, in form of geo-tagging which would
help in carrying the citizens along in the implementation process of the
cookstoves for women. “Anyone can just visit the web page to confirm the number
of states that have benefited from this scheme” she explained.
Emma Kurtz, Project Manager Henirich Boll, said although the
project of this magnitude is a laudable one, however there must be structure in
place for effective implementation and sustainability. She shed more light on the negative impacts of traditionally method of using firewood or
sawdust for cooking. “Statistics has it that Nigeria contributes to the 10% of
tonnes of carbon generated through the use of fossil fuels in the world, this
is quite alarming and lot of death cases has been recorded as a result of this.
Tim Bauer, Sale Director, EnvironFit, an organisation that has
been promoting the sales and use of Clean CookStoves in Nigeria, since 2010,
said this development is the right step in the right direction for a country as
big as Nigeria, confronted with several other environmental issues one of which
is deforestation caused by indiscriminate cutting of trees for firewood. He
added that the sustainability of a project like would require the purchase of
more millions of cookstoves and wonderbags so that it would go around.
“Majority of these women in the rural areas cannot afford these cookstoves,
except it is given to them free, which means they might not be able to maintain
them on their own” he explained.
