By FUNMI OLASUPO, Abuja

Senate Committee on Environment and Ecology has lambasted the Federal Ministry of Environment and its Parastatals for their inability to tackle environmental challenges in the country.

The Committee Chairman, Senator Bukola Saraki while speaking during its oversight function to the Ministry, noted that the Ministry lacks the capacity to coordinate agencies under it for effective service delivery.

The members of the committee in their separate contributions said the National Environmental Standards Regulatory and Enforcement Agency, NESREA, being an operator and regulatory body under the ministry, did not have the capability to carry out its statutory responsibility, maintaining that since inception, its effect has not been felt by the public.

“You credit yourself being an operator and an adviser, I think you are over dramatizing yourself, you don’t have the competence.  It is even technically wrong to say you are an adviser and a regulator.

Earlier, the Minister of Environment, Mrs. Hadiza Mailafia attributed the instability of Nigerian environment to lack of awareness of policy makers and the general public of implementation of actions and behavioral attitude on the environment.