NiMet officials Mr. James Adamu Ijampy, Dr. Mansur Matazu & Mr. Chris Togonus Daudu of (NCRI) at the two day workshop organised by NiMet & SWIFT |
Stakeholders across the economy of Nigeria have called on
the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) to upscale its weather and climate
related information to the benefits of rural communities so as to reduce losses
through well-informed impact-based forecast rather than the raw data without
explanation of negative impact prediction on economic productivity. This was
one of the stands taken at two-day Stakeholders’ Workshop held in Abuja,
recently.
The stakeholders in their reaction to the presentation titled
Communicating and supporting impact-
based forecasting: An Overview delivered by Prof. S.M Hassan where he
postulated that to reduce climate change effects on rural communities, there was
need for effective information to appropriate end users with state of the art
equipment for reliable forecasting and impact if precaution was not adhered or
taken to.
Although, the stakeholders applauded the effort of NiMet in
the recent time, they pointed out that more integrated weather and climate
change information in simple and everyday language that emphasised on impacts
on people and environment be made available to every community adding that end
users should be more engaged with more market products.
While speaking on Identification
of recipients of forecast information who have the ability to react to early
warning systems provided Prof. Ahmed Balogun said there was no economic
intelligence to identify real users of products and then advised that NiMet be
positioned to packaging weather and climate change related services as products
to be paid for by end users saying that there is money in value-addition, but
not in the raw data.
In his speech delivered on the occasion NiMet
and Science for Weather Information and Forecasting Technologies’ (SWIFT),
workshop, the Director General of NiMet, Prof. Sani Abubakar Mashi said his
agency ‘’is committed to providing timely, accurate and reliable weather and
climate information in order to guide policy and decision making as well
provide weather and climate advisories to our stakeholders across all sectors
of national endeavours that contributes to the development of our dear nation’’,
adding ‘’ NiMet’s weather and climate predictions provide useful information
for reducing losses, and taking advantage of favourable weather conditions to
achieve more efficient and effective implementation of programmes and projects
in the country, in the agriculture for instance.”
He noted that empirical evidence has shown that the proper
application of agro-meteorological information to farming was capable of
increasing crops yield by up to 35 percent.
He promised that NiMet would not relent in ensuring the
provision of necessary information and services towards mitigating climate
change challenges in policy planning for agriculture, water management, power
generation, transportation (land, rail, sea and air), health, disaster
management and telecommunication.
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