No Nigerian citizen can deny the fact that 2024 is one of the hottest in the country’s living memory. We all felt the scorching heat between February and May, and are still feeling it, because the year still has a long way to go. Many can attest to the shocking reality that even after celebrating the arrival of the rainy season, there is still warmth even in the midst of the cold showers.
Hence, there is no better example to show how bad climate change has become than this paradox of heat in the depth of deluge. This is why it was not surprising that the latest data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service confirms that last Sunday, July 21, was the hottest day ever measured on Earth. Alas, Nigerian farmers have been served the worst of the raw deal.
Some of them put their seeds in the ground with the hope that the rains had arrived, only to have a fresh wave of heat kill everything they put in the ground. It is really saddening to witness this reality, considering that the Nigerian Meteorological Agency had already, at the beginning of the year, published the weather and climate forecast for 2024, in a project known as the Seasonal Climate Prediction. This is why early warnings are no longer enough.
We must match them with early actions in order to mitigate climate risks. The Director-General and Chief Executive Officer of NiMet, Prof. Charles Anosike, at the Tree Planting and Climate Action Summit themed ‘Tree-mendous Strategy for a Sustainable Futu.