Samuel C. Okorie, team lead for Ethical and Political Leadership Foundation, presented a memorandum for gender balance, and the need to include climate change into the Constitution during a zonal hearing at the Senate public hearing on the 1999 Constitutional Amendment of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on May 27, 2021 in Enugu, Nigeria.

Okorie spoke of his decision to call for the inclusion of a provision for climate change and said, “I saw this as a crucial need after going through the country's Constitution holistically. In my call for the inclusion of climate change into the Constitution of the Federation,as the only person that spoke about it, I got some attention of interest from the Senators, Governors and members of the two Houses present.” Okorie also called upon other organizations that had written similar bills to work together with him in order to compile a single document for submission to the National Assembly to facilitate further proceedings.

A lawyer in the Nigerian Judiciary said that the inclusion of a climate change bill was possible, and that provisions for hearing and enactment could be made for it by the National Assembly. The hearing was attended by 500 members of the public, and 40 presentations were made on the topics of gender balance, political inclusion, constitutional reform, restructuring, religious inclusion, and police reform.

Photograph caption: (In attendance: Governor of Enugu, Governor of Anambra, Governor of Ebonyi, Senators, and Representatives.)