SOStainabilityWeekly

By Oke Epia, E-mail: sostainability01@gmail.com  | WhatsApp: +234 8034000706

Washing and Hushing

COP30: Why Nigeria Must Match Ambition with Accountability

Nigeria is showing up big at COP30, the United Nations (UN) Climate Summit holding in Belém, Brazil. Led by Vice President KashimShettima, Nigeria announced the submission of its third Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC 3.0) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a defining step that marks its most ambitious climate commitment yet.

This follows other major policy advances, including the launch of the National Carbon Market Framework and the Climate Change Fund, both designed to attract investment and finance low-carbon growth. Taken together, these developments project an image of a country eager to lead Africa’s transition toward a greener future.

While these are very commendable steps, we must also ask a more important question: are these commitments grounded in the inclusive participation, transparency, and institutional discipline that the Climate Change Act demands? Nigeria has never lacked ambition; what has often been missing is consistent implementation and accountability. True climate leadership is not measured by what is announced on global stages but by the credibility of the systems that sustain those promises at home.

The Law We Have, the Practice We Lack

The Climate Change Act was enacted to end ad-hoc policymaking and to create a coordinated structure for climate governance in Nigeria. It mandates that the National Council on Climate Change (NCCC) publish a public-engagement strategy and subject draft climate plans to open and extensive consultation before approval. The goal is to ensure policy reflects broad expertise across government, industry, academia, and civil society, rather than remaining a bureaucratic exercise.

To its credit, the development of NDC 3.0 reflected a marked improvement. Multiple workshops and validation meetings were held nationwide, involving ministries, private-sector leaders, youth, women, and state representatives. Some observers remarked that the process was more inclusive than previous NDC cycles, though others noted that the real test lies in implementation and financing. The National Carbon Market Framework likewise benefited from stakeholder input. Between 2024 and 2025, the NCCC and its partners, including the UNFCCC Regional Collaboration Centre for West and Central Africa, convened a series of consultations on market design, carbon tax options, and revenue governance. These engagements culminated in the Framework’s official adoption.

That said, the record of consultation is far from being complete. Draft documents and feedback summaries need to be readily available to the public in machine-readable format; civilsociety participation outside the formal workshops appears limited; and the Climate Change Fund has no published operational guidelines (at least available online as of press time). The Act envisions consultation as a continuous process, not a one-off event. Until transparency and follow-through become routine, policy risks being perceived as elite-driven rather than nationally owned.

Between Leadership and Legitimacy

Nigeria’s COP30 performance appears ambitious and rhetorically confident. The pledge to cut emissions by 32 percent by 2035 and the long-term goal of net-zero signal intent to lead Africa’s climate transition. But leadership is earned through systems, not slogans. The Climate Change Act is meant to build those systems, coordinated reporting, carbon budgeting, and cross-sector monitoring, yet implementation remains uneven.

Some subnational governments echo this concern. As Kano State’s Director of Climate Change, Dr Umar Saleh Anka observed in August, validation exercises have too often been tokenistic, with state-level inputs lost in final documents. He warned that national targets cannot succeed without systems that empower states to measure, report, and verify progress. That perspective captures the gap between consultation and ownership, between being heard and being integrated.

Legitimacy in climate governance is not a technicality; it is a trust issue. Stakeholders must see their contributions reflected in policy outcomes, and citizens must believe that the institutions responsible for climate action are accountable to them. Until coordination is institutionalised and transparency normalized, Nigeria’s climate leadership will remain symbolic rather than transformative.

The Carbon Market Question

Among Nigeria’s most celebrated COP30 initiatives are the new Carbon Market Framework and the Climate Change Fund, both of which, if implemented well, could generate as much as $2.5 to $3 billion annually in carbon finance over the next decade, create jobs, and advance clean-energy innovation.

However, their success will depend on governance and clarity. Who certifies projects? How will revenues be shared with communities hosting carbon assets? And what safeguards will prevent the livelihood conflicts that undermined earlier REDD+ programs? These questions are central to ensuring that carbon finance works for people and not just markets.

The Act empowers the NCCC to maintain a national registry for mitigation and adaptation actions, a foundation for transparency and oversight. Yet until that registry and clear public guidelines for the Climate Change Fund are published, uncertainty will persist. Nigeria does not need more impressive announcements; it needs accountable institutions capable of sustaining them.

Restoring Credibility Through Compliance

For Nigeria’s climate governance to mature, compliance with the Climate Change Act must be non-negotiable. The law provides a clear roadmap: regular public engagement, open data publication, and multi-stakeholder coordination. The NCCC should publish its annual Public Engagement Strategy, release emissions data and performance reports, and clarify how the Carbon Market and Climate Fund will be governed and audited.

Nigeria’s presence at COP30 appears to affirm its global relevance. The next step is to translate that visibility into credibility, at home and abroad. Trust is the real currency of climate action: trust that laws are followed, that data is accessible, and that citizens’ voices count. Nigeria has made the right promises; its next defining task is to prove that those promises rest on transparent and lawful foundations.

Trends and threads

A rapid scan through Nigeria’s NDC 3.0

Nigeria submitted its first Nationally Determined Contributions(NDC) in 2015 as part of the Paris Agreement’s opening commitment.In 2021, there was an update that reflected new national priorities and the outcomes of the first global stocktake. At the ongoing COP30, Nigeria has submitted NDC 3.0- a more integrated, economy-wide plan whichwidens sectoral coverage andreframes the country’s climate commitments.

What’s new and notable in NDC 3.0?

NDC 3.0 raises Nigeria’s mitigation ambition for the coming decade with quantified emissions-reduction pathways (including headline reductions of roughly 29–32 percent by 2030–2035 against 2018 baselines), while explicitly embedding a just transition approach in line with the COP28 consensus. The document expands sectoral coverage to includeenergy, transport, agriculture, forestry, and industry. For the first time, the NDCs formally integrate the health sector as a core element of adaptation and resilience planning.

By this move, Nigeria recognizes climate-sensitive disease burdens and pledged climate-resilient health infrastructure and systems. On adaptation, the NDC commits to building climate-smart cities, strengthening flood defenses, and expanding insurance and social protection for vulnerable communities, concrete steps that embed resilience into urban and rural planning.

TheNDC 3.0 includes bold land-use targets with a 60 percent reduction in deforestation and a commitment to plant 20 million trees annually, plus a pledge to scale recycling and cut open waste burning by 40 percent.

Placing just transition at the center of interventions signals a political commitment to balance decarbonization with social equity by protecting jobs, supporting vulnerable communities, and steering resources to regions dependent on fossil revenues. Nigeria also frames NDC 3.0 as a leadership instrument for West Africa, offering a blueprint for larger economies in the region to align development planning with climate goals.

The gap and the call for partnership

Nigeria estimates the total investment needed to implement mitigation and adaptation measures from 2026–2035 at approximately US$337 billion -a figure that underscores both the scale of the task and the urgent need for blended domestic and international finance. However, since mere targets without green pipelines and finances are promises,Nigeria’s next phase must pivot from pledge to projects, from validation to verification, and from donor goodwill to durable investment.

Spotlight

That Senate Bill on Electric Vehicles

Last week, the Senate passed the second reading of a bill onElectric Vehicles for Nigeria. This legislative step signals the official adoption of the bill proposed by Senator Orji Uzor Kalu. There are several steps to be taken before this move can be catalyzed into law, and at this stage, relevant stakeholders have been served a notice to engage with the process and secure their inputs into what is surely a critical legislation if passed.

Titled, ‘Electric Vehicle Transition and Green Mobility Bill, 2025,’the bill “seeks to establish a national framework to promote the use of electric vehicles (EVs), boost local manufacturing, ensure environmental sustainability, and drive the country’s shift from fossil fuel dependency to green mobility,” according to a report on Parliament Reports, Nigeria’s niche media on the national and state assemblies of Nigeria.

“This bill will help Nigeria move from dependence on fossil fuels toward a cleaner and sustainable energy system. It will ensure that our local industries benefit directly from the emerging global electric vehicle market, create jobs, and reduce emissions in our cities,”Kalureportedly argued during debate monitored by the medium.

While this page is yet to get the full details of the proposed law, it was striking to read that the bill “prohibits unauthorized research and development partnerships and channels all government grants and incentives for EV innovation through accredited Nigerian institutions” and that its “implementation will be coordinated by the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Investment, in collaboration with relevant agencies — including the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Federal Ministries of Power, Transportation, and Environment, and the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS).”

Hopefully, the bill contains provisions that mainstream it into the Climate Change Act (2021) that has extensive jurisdiction on Nigeria’s climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. Hopefully, the bill takes into account current policies and efforts on energy transition and the automobile industry. These and more are legitimate expectations of this bill, especially given the propensity of Nigeria’s lawmakers to create laws without much regard to the enforcement of extant frameworks. This page will keep an eye on this bill.