The Nigerian Meteorological Agency, National Emergency Management Agency and the Nigerian Hydrological Services Agency have been urged to make climate data readily accessible to farmers in the country to boost food production.
Sahel Consulting Agriculture and Nutrition Limited made the call in Abuja at the launch of a programme titled ‘Building Agricultural Systems Resilience Through Effective Early Climate Action Project in Nigeria’.
SCANL, established in 2010, is a Nigerian management consulting firm focused on transforming Africa’s agriculture and nutrition landscape and works in partnership with government agencies, private sector companies, and international development organisations.
It pointed out that the lack of adequate and coordinated data by government agencies had been impacting negatively on early warning signals of climate change in Nigeria, as this was counter-productive to food production.
The Managing Partner of Sahel Consulting, Temi Adegoroye, noted that though relevant government agencies had different data for early warning signals, the data should properly be coordinated, readily available and accessible to all.
“NiMET, NEMA and NIHSA already have infrastructure in place to generate data and make predictions, but the infrastructure needs to be improved because there are a number of gaps that really need to be addressed.
“It is not just about forecasting and making predictions, you need to make sure that the data is also readily available.
“So, what we are going to be doing is to collaborate with NIMET and all the relevant institutions of government, as well as the telecommunication companies, to make sure that we can easily make the data readily available,” Adegoroye stated.
He further explained that Sahel Consulting in partnership with the Bills and Melinda Gate Foundation would collaborate with relevant stakeholders to ensure coordination within the early warning landscape on climate change.
That, he said, would ensure that agencies of government were responsible for early climate warning systems, especially as it relates to food security.
“We need to make sure that any Nigerian should be able to receive text messages informing them that it is going to rain and they should be prepared to take caution If it is a farmer, it tells you when to plant and when not to plant, same with those in the agribusiness space.
“Not just generating the data but making sure that the data is readily available and accessible to the layman who doesn’t understand the forecasting and modelling predictions. Let them just get the alert and act on it,” Adegoroye explained.
On his part, the Senior Programme Officer of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Audu Grema, stated that the issue of data was about how it could be used for modelling and building predictable capability that could be relied on.
“We will have more success if we collectively own the project and drive its implementation. This project is not just for NiMeT, there is a collective structure that we have set up. So for this reason we are putting up a technical steering committee comprising stakeholders in this regard,” Grema stated.
