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The Federal Government (FG) through the Nigerian Meteorological Agency ( NiMet) Director General( DG)/ CEO, Prof. Mansur Bako Mutazu has predicted early rainfall in some parts of the country with friendly agricultural weather to increasing food production as some pockets of flash flood incidences should be expected.
Prof. Muazu said this during an interview yesterday at the 2023 Seasonal Climate Predictions ( SCP), held at the international conference centre, Abuja.
The theme of the SCP event is " Strengthen Climate Risk Early Warning Services for Improved Food Security and Disaster Risk Reduction in Nigeria"
NiMet CEO pointed out that agricultural stakeholders must take the SCP very seriously to be able to plan ahead in order to harness the increased food potential in the predictions, saying that the changing nature of weather has demanded the need for everyone to align with all the forecasts in preparation for all the farming seasons and other activities within the year.
He pointed that the necessary information on the SCP has been made accessible with all the three major local Nigerian languages in order to ensure that people are better informed with climate situations in all the 774 local governments across the country.
According to him '' this year will be a little bit normal unlike 2022, but with pockets of extreme events. Definitely we will have time for thick rainfall. It will be July to September, and because of the high soil moisture we will be expecting flash floods in the city and we are also expecting riverine floods for those that lived within the flood areas. And also for states in the north, we are expecting dry spell that will be in the month of June and July for the period of two to three weeks, and these are all contained in the 2023 Seasonal Climate Prediction"
He emphasized further that this year SCP is coming earlier in January to avert similar incidences of last year, saying that his agency is complying with the instruction given by President Buhari to ensure improvement on weather forecast towards lives safety and food security.
NiMet boss pointed out the need for more collaborations that would ensure scaling down necessary weather forecast information, adding that agricultural extension agents can off take all the information to ensure higher food productivity of 35%.
Meanwhile, the All Farmers Association, President, Architect. Ibrahim Kabiru has demanded that more effort be put into ensuring that proper translation of the predictions are given to farmers in order to avert similar occurrences that led to the rise in hunger in the land with higher cost of foods due to losses of farmlands to flood.
Kabiru said that it is very imperative to take the advice of NiMet very seriously to avoid being vulnerable to flood disaster and food insecurity.
It will be an extra credit for the Nimet and Nigerian government if the they apply more and advanced measures in making sure the it is controlled. Meanwhile, the major cause of food scarcity and high hike in price of food stuff is not mainly flood but herders are the number one cause.
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