CarbonVista Fund By The Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority & Vitol

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REMARKS BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PROF. YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA AT THE SIGNING CEREMONY FOR THE DEFINITIVE AGREEMENT OF CARBONVISTA FUND BY THE NIGERIA SOVEREIGN INVESTMENT AUTHORITY AND VITOL AT THE STATE HOUSE BANQUET HALL GARDEN, PRESIDENTIAL VILLA ON THE 4^TH OF APRIL, 2023

PROTOCOLS

As you heard from the Deputy Chief of Staff, we moved the venue of this signing ceremony from our Conference Room here to the green lawn of the banquet hall, where there is natural light, no diesel or thermal powered-air conditioning, and light bulbs. Of course, being here is merely symbolic, we shouldn’t be launching perhaps a first-of-its-kind fund for climate action and not show that we can be as green as possible.

We are all very excited and must congratulate and commend the management of the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, NSIA and VITOL on this historic collaboration, the CarbonVista Fund. This tells us that we are set for the sorts of collaboration required between the private sector and the public sector and the third sector, civil society.

The truth of the matter is that we are left with no choice today in the world and for many who are taking the developments in the whole climate change story seriously, it is evident that every day reminds us that we are getting closer and closer to the point of no return and if we are not careful, we may indeed find ourselves with a tragedy of immense proportions. Some have said the death of the planet will come with neglect of the planet and of what we have been told already.

Barely two weeks ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report warning that if speedy actions are not taken, global warming might attain 1.5oCelsius much earlier than expected even possibly in the 2030s.

Every one of us and other responsible corporate citizens are already beginning to think in terms of what to do and how to do it. There are many issues in what we describe as the Energy Transition Process – which simply means the transition to net zero emissions, transition to a cleaner environment, and transition to a safer green environment for everyone. That process is a tough process; tough for those of us who are from gas-rich countries and fossil fuel-rich countries. Obviously, fossil fuel is one of the biggest emitters of carbon. For countries like ours rich in fossil fuel, we also find ourselves in a situation where we are energy poor.

In other words, most of our people do not have power, despite the fact that we have fossil fuel. While the world is saying the safest thing to do is decommission all our fossil fuel projects, and not use fossil fuel – oil, and have only restricted use of gas, we are saying while that is true, there must be a way in this transition process where gas is still used especially for industrialization purposes. We cannot do otherwise, our people need power and even for clean cooking purposes, we need to have gas.

While we talk about climate justice and say that the transition must be a fair one, and fossil fuel is still required for several purposes, we must also agree that there is a new way by which Nigeria and Africa can benefit immensely from what is coming to us. In other words, Africa can become the first truly green civilisation – the first civilization on earth to use renewable fuel for purposes of a transformative economic journey.

How can we do that? First of all, we are the lowest emitters today, and if we are going to develop our industry for the rest of the world, we can start from where we are today, we don’t have to start from where the rest of the world is, especially the global North.

If we are the least emitters and able to use green energy effectively, we are able to use the young population that we have, we are able to effectively deploy green manufacturing on a scale that would be required to become the global green factory and power of the world, we can indeed do something revolutionary and different.

This is why what we are seeing today, this sort of collaboration between NSIA and Vitol is an important one because the pipeline of projects they are talking about are the sorts of projects that will make us a truly green economy and can cause us to realise that dream we are talking about.

I am excited about this collaboration and to note that it has been said already by the Managing Director of NSIA, Mr. Aminu Umar-Sadiq as well as the Global Head of Carbon and Environmental Products for Vitol, Mr Michael Curran, that we are trying to develop the African Carbon Market and most importantly, the Nigeria Carbon Market which is already in process and the Director General of the National Council on Climate Change, Dr. Salisu Dahiru is working on this also.

I think that Carbon Market Initiative is crucial because it is one of the important economic opportunities that we have and which we must use. I am also glad to note that Vitol is one of the most important Carbon Emission traders today and they have shown that there is a lot to be done around the carbon trading area. I believe if we do it right here in Nigeria, we can turn it into a massive economic opportunity for ourselves.

I’d like to thank all those who have made this effort possible and say that collaboration is the way. All through this journey, we have seen a lot of work being done by some of our partners – Sustainable Energy For All, Global Alliance for People and Planet, and our Climate Change Council office which has only recently started but has shown a lot of dynamism and innovativeness.

I thank you all for the great effort that has brought us to this point. This sort of collaboration is only the beginning, we have to do a lot more and demonstrate that we are capable of being not just a victim in the climate change story but an important catalyst and innovator for making our world greener and introducing to our own people a prosperous economy based on the green initiatives that we have.

I wish all of us great success in the Carbon Vista Fund and hope that the fund will be bigger and we are told that you will attract more investments from other stakeholders. This is such an incredible opportunity and we must not leave it just to be a $50million fund; the Minister of Finance has said that we would be working closely with the fund to ensure that this is supported and it becomes not only more sizeable, but it achieves all of its objectives.

Thank you very much for listening.