… says NiMet remains best Met. service in Africa
Posted by Sade Williams
Director general, Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), Prof. Mansur Bako Matazu, has again, stressed and re-emphasised the need for countries, communities and hinterlands to get early warnings and act early on weather forecast saying the effect of ignoring or not having access to the predictions can be devastating.
Speaking in an interview with aviation correspondents in Abuja during the 7th Aviation Africa summit, he noted many weather related disasters happening around the world could have been minimised if many of the communities are aware of the warnings and the action they should have taken.
Matazu, who lamented the disaster in Libya, said many of the communities affected may not even have had access to weather information.
While saying Nigeria is not prone to experiencing such magnitude of crisis as in Morocco and Libya, Matazu said though, there are evidences of climate change in Nigeria, adding , ‘but in our case we are being influenced by high intensity rain that results into flash flood within cities and villages and riverine communities as a result of prolonged rain and also inflow of water from neighbouring countries as a result of opening of dams.’
”Earthquake in Morocco is a geophysical phenomenon and it is not being influenced by atmospheric process. Climate change and global warming are just like malaria and signs of malaria. So, there is no relationship with the geophysics that happened within the earth crust and we have zones that are prone to that. We are lucky Nigeria is not among. Secondly, our system also in Nigeria is a consistency system, so we don’t expect such high level intensity of activities we have seen in Libya. Libya used to be a dry area, at times they experienced only 25 milimeters of rain that can fall in two hours in Abuja is what Libya would experience in a year. Imagine because of the issue of climate change increasing temperature, increasing condensate activities and increasing the possibility of having high intensity storms over Europe, this was as a result of passage of a bigger storm over Europe that created a very long pressure over the Sahara Desert and with high energy because of the solar radiation in it coupled with dust in the atmosphere that they have a lot of Sahara and a lot of particles, so that developed into a very severe system that impounded the area. Area that had been dry for several decades, several centuries, now experienced flooding.
”We don’t expect much of that intensity, but definitely there are evidences of climate change in the country but in our case we are being influenced by high intensity rain that results into flash flood within cities and villages and riverine communities as a result of prolonged rain and also inflow of water from neighbouring countries as a result of opening of dams.
”We have predicted that this year in Nigeria, we are not expecting a lot of high intensity rain, we are just having an average weather and climatic condition with some pockets of above and below and we have seen this happening in Maiduguri, Bauchi, Yola that they had to pray for rain some weeks ago. But, we will keep the public informed of any situation whether on a short or long term.”, he added.
He revealed that for effectiveness, NiMet translates its predictions to more than three languages while it also engages remote communities when releasing its Seasonal Climate Prediction.
”If you don’t digest the information to the level of the understanding of the users, it has no value. So you can do all the science, you can spend all the resources, you can do all the analysis but if the users don’t understand, so in everything we do, we consider our users. As a result of this, we engage in a lot of partnerships and under these we were able to see the demands for co-production. Before we even do the forecast, we invite stakeholders, they give us their experience of the previous year’s forecast and we also want to know how they need the forecast, in what form and frequencies and that was what informed our translation to three languages. And under collaboration we could do any language. This year we were able to downscale to 28 states and then this year we want to cover the whole country with the help of the governors. We have addressed the Nigerian Governors’ Forum more than three, four times. We were invited by the National Economic Council and we want to sign an MoU with most of the countries.”
Matazu disclosed further that in Meteorological service, Nigeria is getting more relevant as a big brother in Africa and the world, adding that it now offers technical service to most African countries as its strides are also being recognised by giant countries and the United Nations n(UN).
”We do provide technical service as I said. There is what we call WMO VCP (Voluntary Country Partnership), which is called in ICAO as “No Country Left Behind.” So weather is dynamic and it moves from one area to the other. Even if you have the capability and you don’t share that expertise to your neighbours, I don’t think you are helping. Like for Nigeria, if there is a problem in Niger for drought and flood, we have over a thousand kilometres borders, all of them would move, that is number one. The reason America and other countries are called Superpowers is by providing some of these support.
”So for you to get relevance, credibility and become big brother, you have to provide some support to the weaker community and with that we have achieved a lot as a country, we have been categorised as the best Met Service and they always refer to us if there is anything and I gave example with the issue of fertiliser. So, anything you have to start small and people will appreciate and value. So we have started that Volume Coverage Pattern (VCP) with World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) at no cost, but if I tell you, the VCP meeting that we attended, Nigeria was the only black nation because you have US, UK, Spain, Netherlands, eight of them plus Nigeria because we want to show the world that we are not a beggar nation in all ramifications, even in the science of weather and services, we are not waiting for any country. We just had a meeting with the French Government, we are going to do a programme with them and they were very happy with what they have seen.
”This provides credibility, trust and relevance and with that you would get realised by the global community and they suggested Nigeria will help these countries under this United Nations financed Systematic Observation Financing Facility (SOFF). The essence of this SOFF is based on the UN Secretary General’s statement that in the next five years, all citizens in the world must have access to early warning; you have seen what happened in Libya; 10,000 people unaccounted for and more than 6,000 people confirmed dead in one incident. But if these people got early warning, it has been confirmed globally that if people get early warning on any imminent weather hazard, you are bound to reduce casualties by more than 70 percent. But if they get the information one week ahead, it will increase.
”Like the way we give our Seasonal Climate Prediction, almost six months in advance, that is a very good lead time and based on this, the UN gathered people, financing facilities, all these development banks like the World Bank, they have contributed money and it is through this money that they said, ‘Okay, bigger nations should help weaker ones.’ That was how they identified Nigeria and we are assisting Niger, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso and also Somalia. This is just the first phase, we are going to do an additional phase and in all these, our staff are getting involved, they are getting more exposed and Nigeria is getting more relevant as a big brother in Africa and in the world generally. We are also getting additional funding also to support our services.”, he said.
