Nigeria not expecting high intense flood like Libya’s – NiMet DG

The Director-General of the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), Prof. Mansur Bako Matazu yesterday allayed fear of Nigerians over the recent flood in Libya where about 10,000 people perished.

He said Nigeria is not going to experience high level intensity of flood as witnessed in Libya even as he stated that adopting an early warning system is imperative to minimise the impact of any flood.

In a chat with newsmen yesterday, the NiMet DG said even though there is evidence of climate change in Nigeria, they are not as intense as they have in other countries.

He also spoke on the earthquake recently experienced in Morocco, saying Nigeria is not prone to such natural disasters.

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He said, “Earthquake is a geophysical phenomenon and it is not influenced by atmospheric process. Climate change and global warming are just like malaria and signs of malaria. So there is no relationship with the geophysics that happened within the earth cross and we have some countries that are prone to that.

“We are lucky Nigeria is not among them. Secondly our system also in Nigeria is a consistency system, so we don’t expect such high level intensity of activities we have seen in Libya.”

According to him, while Libya is a dry area which experiences only 22 millimeters of rain which can fall in two hours in Abuja or Lagos, the climate change crisis was responsible for the recent flood.

“We don’t expect much of that intensity but definitely there are evidences of climate change in the country but in our case we are being influenced by high intensity rain that results to flash flood within cities and villages and riverine places as a result of prolonged rain and inflow of water from neighbouring countries whether as a result of rainfall inflow or opening of dams.

“We have predicted that this year in Nigeria we are not expecting a high intensity rain. We are just having an average climatic condition, pocket of above and below,” he said.

He said the agency would keep informing the public of any change in the weather, saying an early warning system can reduce hazard or casualty by 70 per cent.