Mixed reactions trail Abuja hot weather

This, several residents have said is taking its toll on them even as some business persons are smiling to the bank.
 However, residents said they observed a change on Wednesday but that it only lasted for a while.
 Mohammed A. Umar, an environmentalist, said residents might not heave a sigh of relief until the rains set in.
 Umar, who resides in Tunga Maje, said though weather is unpredictable, 2015 is hotter than normal, citing human abuse of the environment as a contributing factor.
“I don’t expect it to be cold because we are experiencing persistent heat,” he said.
 Emmanuel Andrew, a resident of Airport Road, corroborated Umar, saying he longs to have a more clement weather in which he can sleep without worrying about electricity.  
 Some of the residents who spoke to City News, said the temperature during the day usually discourages them from going out though staying inside is hardly a solution.
 “The sun is unusually hot these days, even the breeze blowing during the afternoon is always hot,” said Yakubu Hussein, a resident of Lokogoma.
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has ranked 2014 as the hottest year on record, as part of a continuing trend. 1998 was the hottest year before the 21st century.
Some residents expressed fear that 2015 could surpass 2014 as the hottest year with the occurring trend.
Meanwhile, findings of some researchers, among them Dennis Lettenmaier, a Geography professor at the University of California, USA, lend credence to the fears of the residents.
 The researchers, in a study published in the journal of Environmental Research Letters, said cities are getting hotter with heat waves said to have risen over the past 40 years.
“The fact that the trend was so much stronger at night underscores the role of the heat island effect in urban areas,” the report, which analysed data from 217 cities around the world, was quoted.
 During the day, the scorching sun makes me want to have a rethink about going out, said Ladun Adeoye, a civil servant in Apo, Abuja.
 However, when some people are at logger heads with nature, others are smiling to the bank, as some businessmen describe the weather as the best for their business. Among such business people is Jelili Olulade, who repairs air conditioners near the Utako Motor Park.
 Jelili said a minimum of four motorists come to the workshop daily to fix their car air conditioners unlike, “during the rainy season or harmattan when I don’t get people as many as this,” he said.
 Austin Jude, another air conditioner repairer in Wumba, said he charged between N10,000 and N20,000 to refill home air conditioners now, “the way people now do their AC is high,” he said in Pidgin English.
 Water sellers are not left out of the people that benefit from the hot weather.
However, some residents have expressed their displeasure at poor power supply in many places in the territory.
In places, especially the satellite towns, residents who do not have generators take to the veranda to relieve themselves of the heat at night while in most cases many people sleep there until early morning the next day.  
Several satellite towns and rural areas bear the brunt of the low power supply with residents in Mpape, an Abuja urban slum saying they get electricity less than three hours daily.
In the face of the heat, the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) admitted that there is a cut in its power allocation by 100 megawatts (mw).
The media head, Ahmed Shekarau, said in February that the average daily allocation to the company from the 1st to 13th February was 290 megawatts against the average of 390mw within same period in January 2015.
Because of the shortfall, power supply has been low with the Disco admitting that it was compelled to consider certain strategic institutions in Abuja.
Among the effects of heat, Habeeb Abdullahi, said he now walks around with bottle of water to ease the effect of the weather.