DETERMINED to build the capacity of Nigerian students and young people on environmental issues, the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), a Nigerian environmental justice campaigns organization is partnering with the Right Livelihood Award Foundation in Stockhom, Sweden to establish the Rights Livelihood Campus (RLC) in the country. The Campus that is the fifth of such in the world and the second in Africa is to be sited at the University of Port Harcourt (Uniport).
In an online statement to AkanimoReports on Monday, the group said the college is a capacity building initiative of the Right Livelihood Award Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden, which awards annually the “Alternative Nobel Prize”. It is an opportunity for the awardees of the prestigious prize to impact their knowledge on others, in this case, younger people. The RLC currently has its Global Secretariat at the Universiti Sains in Penang, Malaysia.
Dr. Monika Griefahn, Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees, Right Livelihood Award Foundation and a former German minister of Environment, welcomes the new development.
“We are very pleased that a Right Livelihood College campus is being established at the University of Port Harcourt in Nigeria’, she says. “The College continues to make positive impact in the lives of young scholars and continues to build direct links between academics, laureates and the wider community.
”We commend the university and the HOMEF for engaging in this partnership.” Speaking for the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the university, Dr. Fidelis Allen said, ”the university has remained a citadel of learning and in the best traditions of scholarship we see the opportunity to host the RLC campus as one that will challenge our scholars as well as connect them with their peers around the world. We are equally pleased with HOMEF for making this partnership possible.”
The college is being hosted in the faculty. HOMEF Director, Nnimmo Bassey, who won the Rights Livelihood Award in 2010, is equally excited at the prospects: “The Niger Delta region of Nigeria has brought so much petroleum-dollar to Nigeria. Sadly the extraction of the petroleum resources has brought devastation to the environment and livelihoods of the people.
”We believe that targeted researches here will generate tools for tackling these problems which will in turn find application in other challenged territories beyond the Niger Delta. HOMEF is proud to collaborate with Uniport in hosting the RLC campus in Nigeria”.
RLC is a global capacity building initiative of the Right Livelihood Award Foundation, based in Stockholm, Sweden. Since inception in 1980, the Right Livelihood Award, popularly known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize”, has been bestowed on 153 laureates from 64 countries. It highlights and supports stellar achievements in the fields of peace and justice, the environment and for the awardee’s endeavours to eliminate material and spiritual poverty.
Some of their campuses across the world include the Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia; Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia; Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, Germany, and Lund University Center for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS), Lund University, Sweden.
Besides Bassey, the only other Nigerian to have won the award so far is the late Ken Saro-Wiwa, together with his organization the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), in 1994.
Uniport will be formally unveiled as the Nigerian chapter of the RLA Campus during the Sustainability Academy (aka Home School) #02 in Port Harcourt scheduled for between 25th and 26th of November 2013. The event will witness the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). On hand to sign the MoU will be Monika Griefahn, Uniport’s Vice Chancellor Professor Joseph Ajienka and Baassey, coordinator of the Academy. The new partnership will enable Uniport’s Post-Graduate scholars to have access to the corp of Right Livelihood laureates as well as exchange opportunities with four other existing campuses across the globe.
