Posted by Sade Williams
The National Ecomomic Council (NEC) is to discuss critical matters relating to the environment and extreme weather, as the Director general, Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), Prof. Mansur Bako Matazu, met with state governors on raising awareness about forecast and early action, especially in vulnerable communities.
Speaking in an interview on an NTA program on ‘Mitigating Flood Amidst Rising Water Level’, on Tuesday, Prof. Matazu said that he led his team to brief the Governors’ Forum on the need to continue to raise awareness about the hazards inherent in extreme weather conditions, adding that the governors remain the only channel through which the communities would be reached.
Matazu insisted that many of the extreme events happen in the last Mille or communities but getting in touch with them with necessary information has been an arduous task.
He however, said he recently got the assurance from the Governors’ Forum that critical matters about the current weather would be presented before NEC soon.
“At the last meeting with the Governors, we were given the opportunity to talk and freely raised the level of alert especially to be well prepated and based on the agreement, it was established that we really need to work closely and together. For us in NiMet, we have 100 offices across the country and we have capability to do state level forecast of not only rainfall but we want Nigerians to look beyond the negative aspect of weather and because the old is developing,cee have to key in, thanks to the policies of government, we need to explore other weather information and utilise them positively.
“We are very optimistic, we have got strong words from the governors that some of the issues that are beyond us would be taken to NEC”, he said.
The NiMet boss, who expressed sympathy with farmers, noted that the present weather condition, especially, in the North is not favourable stressing that ‘July to September is the ‘wetest’ period in the rainy season’.
He regretted that farmers in many communities where weather information information is needed to guide them during planting were not aware of critical forecast even though the information was translated into other languages when the Seasonal Climate Prediction (SCP) was released in January.
“As discussed earlier, July up to September is the wetest period in our rai ny season, especially in the Northern part of the country and we’ve seen build up of these rains in the Noth with some pockets of dry spell because presently, we are experiencing El Nino globally. We ‘ve seen extreme weather condition in the US, Australia and some parts of Asia and Europe. We are also experiencing such impact and shocks within the country .
“Many states in the North have been experiencing well above normal rainfall a d these have now created rain waters in form of flash floods and fluvial floods. States like Borno and Yobe and presently experiencing dry spell. This is what we’ve already highlited in our January release of seasonal prediction. This phenomena is also injurious to farmers as flood is also.
“For us in NiMet, we are working very hard with other enabling agencies like National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER) and we were present during the last Governors’ Forum where we empasise effective collaboration, in this era of climate change, we need to work together, between states and federal governments and state governments need to coordinate effectively with the last Mile communities at the local government levels.
“On our own, we will continue to provide updates, in short, medium and long term, but definitely, this year is an El Nino year and we are bound to see extreme events in form of floods and dry spell.
“For farmers, we were able to translate the documents we’ ve published and we have done some downscaling activities, holding workshops and emphasizing that most of the states in northern states
