Nigerian Universities Ready for Conversation on Climate Literacy, Says UNILAG VC

Dike Onwuamaeze

Nigerian universities are ready to be a part of the conversation that will foster coordinated action on climate literacy in the country.

This was disclosed by the Vice-Chancellor, University of Lagos (UNILAG), Prof Folasade Ogunsola, during the ‘Scaling Climate Literacy: An Inter-University Dialogue for Curriculum Transformation in South-west Nigeria’, which held at UNILAG last week.

The event also witnessed the presentation and launch of a toolkit, prepared by the Institute of Nigeria-China Development Studies (NCDS), UNILAG, in partnership with the Pulitzer Centre’s Africa Impact Seed Fund.

The toolkit is for embedding climate literacy into the Core Curriculum Minimum Academic Standard (CCMAS) not only for environmental science programmes, but across accounting, law, engineering, the arts, and every other ‘non-traditional’ discipline.

Ogunsola described climate change as one of the defining challenges “of our time, and it does not respect our institutional or disciplinary” boundaries.

She said, “It is therefore fitting that our response should equally cut across boundaries, drawing together law and engineering, the sciences and the arts, and now drawing together the universities from Lagos, Oyo, Ogun, Osun, Ondo, and Ekiti States, in a shared region of effort. So, I would like to extend my thanks to the Pulitzer Centre for being a part of this and supporting us.”  

In his goodwill message, the Education Manager, Africa Pulitzer Centre, Eric Selemani, said that the dialogue “represents a vision of commitment” to education for the 21st century.

“As you know, we are living in an era of climate change, misinformation, public health crisis, and social inequality increasingly in the lives of our learners,” stated Selemani. “These challenges cannot be addressed by science alone. They require citizens who can think creatively, evaluate evidence, understand possible perspectives, and develop practical solutions.”

The Director of NCDS, University of Lagos, Prof Olufemi Muibi Saibu, said that curriculum response to the climate crisis cannot be generic.

“A law faculty, an engineering faculty, and a faculty of arts will each need to internalise this differently, and south-west Nigeria’s university will need to internalise it differently again from anywhere else. What we build today, and what we launch today, in the Climate Literacy Toolkit and the South-west Nigeria Climate Literacy Educators’ Network, must be ours: designed here, tested here, and owned by the institutions that will use it,” he said.