The Director General and Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), Prof. Charles Anosike, has charged stakeholders on preparedness and the urgency of helping to ensure that communities are prepared to respond to climate disasters.
He spoke on Wednesday, 28th November 2024 when he joined other participants drawn from the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSAL), National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), and Office of the Vice President, at a one-day ‘Roundtable Meeting On Anticipatory Action Framework For Nigeria’.
The meeting which was organized by the Office of the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Kashim Shettima, in collaboration with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), was aimed at developing a unified approach and framework for anticipatory action in Nigeria. The meeting also explored innovative, multidimensional strategies for implementing effective prevention and mitigation measures, while also facilitating the exchange of best practices and lessons learned among the respective organizations.
Welcoming participants to the meeting, the Vice President, Kashim Shettima, represented by Sen. Ibrahim Hassan Hadejia, Deputy Chief of Staff to the President, Office of the Vice-President, said that the meeting was timely as President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has directed a more systematic, collaborative and strategic approach to coordinating humanitarian efforts in Nigeria.
Trond Jensen, the Head of Office for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Nigeria said that the meeting featured the most distinguished guests the office has had in recent time. “We are committed to fostering stronger collaboration with our Nigerian partners in government, in civil society, but also with our international partners. Our collaboration is for our mutual benefit, and for the benefit of Nigerians who need humanitarian assistance. As the DG/CEO of NiMet, Professor Charles Anosike said earlier, we can only address these challenges together by working together, at the federal level, at the state level, and even at the local government level. We can only move forward by learning from each other. I’m very pleased that we are all here today to discuss how we can work together to promote anticipatory action. And in my mind, innovation should be an integral part of how we work as humanitarians. Every single day, we need to ask ourselves, how do we better meet the needs of conflict or disaster-affected people?“
Contributing, tCharles Anosike said that it is very important that all the stakeholders invest in preparedness.
“There are two national documents that form the foundation of disaster response in Nigeria. NiMet’s Seasonal Climate Prediction (SCP) which is released very early each year, and NIHSAL’s flood outlook. The flood outlook feeds from the SCP. These two documents form the basis of national preparedness and help to ensure that we prepare our communities to respond to climate disasters”.
Prof. Anosike said that there are opportunities for stakeholders and development partners to fund the downscaling of the documents so that they can get to the last mile recipients, to the communities to prepare them on time to respond.
“After the unveiling of the Seasonal Climate Prediction, we have to go to all the different zones to downscale and also produce crop calendar for the farmers. We must find ways to get these products and information to the people. We are forming a partnership with the state governors through the Nigeria Governors’ Forum. We can’t achieve anything without the states. The Governors will help us to ensure that the information gets to the communities early and also ensure that the communities are prepared”, Prof. Anosike concluded.
NiMet will host the next roundtable in a fortnight with expanded participants.