NiMet DG Meets Governors over Vulnerable Communities

Director General, Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), Prof. Mansur Bako Matazu, has met with state governors, and decisions were taken to raise awareness about forecast and early action, especially in vulnerable communities.

Speaking on Tuesday in an interview on NTA program tagged: ‘Mitigating Flood Amidst Rising Water Level’, Prof. Matazu said 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 happened, 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 National Economic Council (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, we 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 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 have 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,” Matazu further said.