Abstract

Climate change is one of man’s greatest challenges in our contemporary time, the world over. In the developing nations, Nigeria inclusive, its effects are traumatic due to its destructive tendencies. From sea-level rise to its attendant consequences of fiercer weather, increased frequency and intensity of storms, heavy and windy rains, floods, droughts, exacerbation of poverty to the breakdown of infrastructure, increased frequency of fire to the loss of environmental, political, economic and social security. Scientists attribute climate change or global warming to the release of greenhouse gases in excessive quantity into the atmosphere which exacerbates the “greenhouse effect” by trapping of the sun’s energy thereby raising the temperature worldwide. It was found that the most singular cause of this deadly phenomenon “climate change or global warming” is the activities of human beings. This paper therefore, seeks to assess the causes and effects of climate change and the imperative for development in Nigeria. The study is purely qualitative and relied entirely on secondary data such as textbooks, scholarly peer-reviewed articles, official documents of the UN and newspapers. Information gathered were content analyzed. The study found out that Nigeria flares the highest amount/quantity of gas in the world and that the government does not have any legislation to reduce the greenhouse gas emission. The conclusion is that climate change is a reality and needs to be tackled headlong because of its effects to humans. The paper recommended that both the government and the citizenry should have behaviour change, and government should have a good national development policy and strategic plan to diversify the economy.