ON THE 2025 NIMET PREDICTIONS
The concerned authorities should heed NiMET’s forecast
Consecutive years of flooding and a lackadaisical attitude may be difficult to manage if authorities in the country don’t take the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) 2025 Seasonal Climate Prediction (SCP) with seriousness. The impact of this natural occurrence is already showing in food supply, and environmental sustainability in subtle ways. Besides, we have lost hundreds of lives to floods which have also in recent years displaced millions of people as well as farmlands, livestock and other means of livelihood, especially for rural dwellers. Several local economies have collapsed while the interventions designed to ameliorate the suffering of those affected made little or no impact whatsoever.
NiMET has issued a grim warning that eight northern states will experience delayed onset of rainfall in 2025 while no fewer than 13 others will experience early rainfall. “A normal to below-normal annual rainfall is anticipated in most parts of Nigeria compared to long-term average,” said NiMET which also warns that “high-intensity rainfall is expected in May to June that may likely result in flash floods in the coastal cities.” As a pro-active measure to prevent what could be another human catastrophe, the agency has consistently advised state governments to ensure the relocation of Nigerians living in flood-prone areas. We hope that this timely advice is heeded so that we do not relive another national tragedy.
Even when accelerated desertification is threatening food supply in the Northern part of the country and rapid deforestation is shrinking agricultural productivity in the South, many key stakeholders are either unaware of the scale of the problem or fail to make the connections between the growing human and food security issues and the creeping effects of climate change. Yet, climate scientists project that by 2050, there would be up to a billion climate refugees across the world, particularly from developing countries, including Nigeria. Our country is already ranked as very susceptible to the impact of climate change by several vulnerability indices produced by global research organisations.
On flooding, we note with particular concern that the crisis of recent years could have been avoided or substantially ameliorated. It was not avoided because the relevant state governments did very little to help. Some made perfunctory announcements immediately following NiMET’s warning and left it at that. In states where matters were taken beyond merely announcing the warning, the communities in the endangered areas were simply advised to evacuate, without any arrangements to relocate them. More shameful is that most of the places that were adversely affected by the flooding of recent years still bear the undiminished scars of the devastation. This, despite the fact that Nigerians were regaled with tales of federal government and private sector interventions, running into several billions of Naira without any meaningful impact on the lives of victims.
Experts have warned about the consequences of not preparing for the rage of nature, especially flooding. “A look at how past floods have been handled in Nigeria shows clearly that we are not short of predictions and forecasting of impending disasters¸” the Executive Director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), Nnimmo Bassey once said. “Our governments and responsible agencies have consistently fallen short of the expectations of citizenry who have been routinely abandoned to battle the floods”.
Given the experiences of recent years, authorities in Abuja and the 36 states should take NiMET predictions seriously. They should all update themselves on vulnerable areas, what needs to be done and the reasonable time frame for meaningful pre-emptive action. Prevention, as conventional wisdom teaches, is always better than cure.
