The Chairman, Senate  Committee on Environment and Ecology, Senator Bukola Saraki, on Wednesday faulted the procedure adopted by the federal government in awarding the N9.3 billion clean cook stoves contract.

In a statement signed by his media aide, Bamikole Omishore in Ilorin,  Senator Saraki said that he was faulting the intervention on the grounds of “misplacement of immediate priority and lack of transparency and accountability in the procurement process.”

He described the government’s funding of the Clean Cookstove from the ecological fund without due process as a mockery of the Procurement Act and the  Cookstove initiative.

The ecological fund which is  assumed to have been  the source of this fund, was established to fight emergency ecological  problems in Nigeria like flooding, erosion and other unforeseen natural disasters and not for funding initiatives such as clean  cookstove which are suppose to be funded through appropriations by National  Assembly,” he stated.

The former governor of Kwara State said that the  presidency’s decision to spend N9.3billion ecological fund on clean stove initiative is questionable.

He added: “The Global  Alliance for Clean Cookstoves is striving to create an enabling market for clean cookstoves and such fundamental best practices should be emulated for a sustainable clean cookstoves programme in Nigeria.

“Creating a market and enabling environment and adoption of innovative business models to attract business  investments in scaling up the use of clean cookstoves in Phase two of the Global Alliance’s vision  were part of what was agreed  at recently concluded  Cookstoves Future Summit in New York”.

Saraki noted that the distribution  of stoves is important in stimulating the demand for the product, “but the amount of intervention that was announced by OSGF who knows only little of the issue instead of the  Federal Ministry of Environment who has been championing the issue, came without adequate research, when there are still awareness gaps, and more immediate life threatening ecological issues currently confronting   the nation”.

 Source – Daily times