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Prof. Mansur Bako Matazu, DG, NiMet
Posted by Sade Williams
The Director General, Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), Prof. Mansur Bako Matazu, has urged the incoming Governors-elect to embrace the products of the agency, especially the Seasonal Climate Prediction (SCP) and take early action on the warnings contain therein.
Speaking on 2023 Forecast, monitored on Channels Television on Saturday, he said the outgoing governors through the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, are aware of the SCP and the early warnings given by NiMet to mitigate the effects of weather conditions for 2023, adding that the incoming governors must be proactive and continue to take action from where their predecessors would stop in order to save lives and property.
According to him, there is the need to educate farmers, the builders and the need for them to demarket places that are prone to flooding before building or when buying and valuing lands.
He also urged individuals and corporate organisations to heed the warnings, adding though, the amount of rainfall for this year may not be as high as that of 2022, the impact of the predictions might be devastating if not mitigated.
“You know, a forecast information is advisory, and then no matter how early, no matter how precise such forecast product or service is, if there are no response especially, such response that will come from the Last Mile, the communities, the local governments , districts and clans of the country. From our previous years experience, corination used to be the challenge especially between the centre here where we provide the service and the State and local governments levels.
“But we have had an excellent coordination at the federal level, we’ve approached all state governments and made several presentations at the Nigerian Governors’ Forum where we emphasised that we need to go further with details in the 774 local governments areas to be able to cascade such predictions and we were able to do same with many states, and because the information is advisory, if you do not heed to such advisories in good time, you are tend to have such damages.”, he said
He noted that NiMet has collaborated with relevant organisations that have developed maps containing state and local governments-specific information.
While emphasising on immediate action by state governments, Prof. Matazu said: “We have approached the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, they have integrated us as part of the induction programmes for the incoming governors, we also have our State offices that are ever ready to continue to collaborate with the governments and provide further advisories
“We have already rolledup a programme and will be starting in a couple of days at the state governments levels but what we are asking is for incoming governors to please open their arms and also integrate our activities into the state action and community development plans, and with this, we will have improvements in yields, reduction in extreme events and reduction in loss of livelihood that we have seen happened severally” , he added.
