…as agency, WMO train 16 African countries on early warning system
By Sade Williams
The Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), has called for synergy in a bid to proactively combat the negative impacts of changing climate by providing actionable impact-based products and services toward mitigating the impact of weather and climate extreme events on lives and property across the globe.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of a two-week capacity building workshop on Early Warning System, organised jointly by NiMet and World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) for 16 African countries at the Regional Training Centre, Lagos on Monday, Professor Mansur Bako Matazu said weather has no boundary, and it is no respecter of political or geographical affiliations, adding that all hands must be o deck to mitigate the impact.
”Recent years have seen significant increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather and climate events globally, often leading to huge destruction of properties and loss of lives. These extreme events are linked to the changing climate, which the world is still grappling with ways to mitigate and provide effective adaptation mechanisms. The United Nations (UN), recognising the key role of WMO in creating and sustaining climate- resilient societies across the globe, is spearheading a new action to ensure that every person on Earth is protected by Early Warning Systems by the year 2027. Hence, the Early Warning for All (EW4ALL) initiative.
”It is against this backdrop, that the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) have joined forces to organise this workshop”, he said.
According to Matazu, who was represented by Dr. Daniel Okafor, director, Weather forecasting at NiMet, the workshop targets meteorologists and climate scientists across the Sub-region, focusing on capacity building, knowledge exchange, collaboration, and skill acquisition to develop competencies for realizing the goal of EW4ALL, adding that ”it signifies a significant milestone in our collective efforts to enhance and strengthen early warning systems in the region, a vital component of our commitment to building resilient communities in the face of increasing climate variability and extreme weather events.’
In a separate interview, Okafor described the training as a testament of what obtains across the world ad of the recognition accorded Nigeria through NiMet Regional Training Centre (RTC) by WMO.
”Nigeria as a whole is being showcased to the world that it has competency to train our African brothers on how to mitigate issues of weather. It is a thing that has been planned. And being that WMO wants to make sure that the issue of Early warning transcends not just to the elites, it has to go down to the last mile. That is part of it, we are here to train them. We all know that NiMet has been trying to partner with other sister agencies that are involved in weather issue to make sure that they transcend our forecast downwards.
”The training being held in Nigeria buttresses that fact that even in WMO, our DG is the permanent representative there and that shows he has been able to showcase what Nigeria has and the fact that they have identified that Nigeria has the manpower to train other African countries that are yet where we are technologically, in this region, asking Nigeria to do this for us is a privilege, not just to showcase what we have but as our bothers’ keepers. We are still proving forecast for some African countries.”, he said.
Okafor used the ocassion to call on all arms of governments to partner with NiMet in order to achieve the aim of the forecasts being released by the agency.
”The only major thing that we have been clamouring for and which we think we are making some headway is to make sure that State and local governments wee reason in partnering with us to make that the message goes down. As much as we want to use the media to send the message, there are some localities that don’t have access to media. When we forecast, it is meant for other agencies to partner and take the message to the last mile. So that the issue of disaster will be minimally reduced”, he added.
