Professor Mansur Bako Matazu

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]ollowing the series of unfortunate disasters that has affected the North of the African continent, Director General of the Nigerian Meteorological Agency ( NiMet) Professor Mansur Bako Matazu has differentiated between what happened in Morocco and Libya as it relates to what Nigeria passes through.

Libya:

Decrying the flood in Libya which has cost the loss of over 11,000 lives so far, Professor Bako said Nigeria does not expect such high intensity of activities as in Libya.

According to him Libya used to be a dry area, at times they experienced only 25 millimetres of rain for a whole year but a lot has changed due to climate change.

He said, ” Our system also in Nigeria is a consistent system, so we don’t expect such high level intensity of activities as we have seen in Libya. Libya used to be a dry area, at times they experienced only 25 millimetres of rain that can fall in two hours in Abuja is what Libya would experience in a year.

“Imagine because of the issue of climate change increasing temperature, increasing condensate activities and increasing the possibility of having high intensity storms over Europe.

“This was as a result of passage of a bigger storm over Europe that created a very long pressure over the Sahara Desert and with high energy because of the solar radiation in it coupled with dust in the atmosphere that they have a lot of Sahara and a lot of particles, so that developed into a very severe system that impounded the area. Area that had been dry for several decades, several centuries, now experienced flooding.

He however said Nigeria does not expect much of that intensity, but revealed there is evidence of climate change in the country being influenced by high intensity rain that results into flash flood within cities and villages and riverine communities.

According to him, this is as a result of prolonged rain and also inflow of water from neighbouring countries as a result of opening of dams.

He said, “We are at the receiving end of most of these rivers and we are located at the downstream and the downstream location of the river is the most dangerous zone because that is where the accumulation happens. Our flood is based on whether the release of water from the dam in neighbouring countries or from within. We have made a lot of efforts in our engagement with the dams authorities in Nigeria and they have all our forecast and based on that they begin to release the water gradually.

He also said, “We have predicted that this year in Nigeria, we are not expecting a lot of high intensity rain, we are just having an average weather and climatic condition with some pockets of above and below and we have seen this happening in Maiduguri, Bauchi, Yola that they had to pray for rain some weeks ago. But, we will keep the public informed of any situation whether on a short or long term.

Morocco:

On the unfortunate earthquake in Morocco that has cost nearly 3000 lives, he maintained it is a geophysical phenomenon that is not influenced by atmospheric processes( NiMet’s forte).

He also said there were zones prone to such geophysical phenomena, but Nigeria is lucky not to be part of that zone.

He said, “Earthquakes are a geophysical phenomenon and they are not influenced by atmospheric processes. 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 core and we have zones that are prone to that. We are lucky Nigeria is not among.

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