Editorial

Flashpoint amid a pandemic

According to United States of America’s National ‎Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA), the temperature of the world rose by three quarters of a degree between 1906 and 2005.

They say the trend is accelerating at nearly twice that rate by the year 2100, they predict that about eighty years from now, the temperature of the world would have increased by eight degrees centigrade. Oceans will be one to four feet higher and more coastal lands, including Lagos may face heavy floods accompanied by storms and hurricanes.

Already Lagos in particular is faced with the challenge of rising sea levels leading to heavy floods. Every season of rains lead to homelessness for hundreds of Lagosians. Unfortunately, Lagos State government is still planning to build mega cities from land reclaimed from the sea, which may later wash away the reclaimed land. 

All efforts by man to battle the course of nature with science ‎have met with relatively little success; and humanity is fast discovering that you cannot have your cake and eat it. The burning of fossil fuels, for industrial and domestic uses, will continue to lead to the melting of ice caps which reflect a large chunk of radiation by the sun back to space. As the ice caps reflect radiation, they send back the heat that would have been built up to raise the earth’s temperature.

South Africa took the lead in Africa by building nuclear plants for electricity generation. Nigeria now relies heavily on fossil fuel powered generators for electricity, generating more ozone layer depleting gases and increasing the world’s temperature in the process. In the cycle of carbon imprinting, the concept of a world being a global village fits correctly. That is why the world’s temperature keeps rising.

It would have been expected that a nation which has courted natural calamities would be seasonally prepared for the emergencies that could arise. As the rains come in, and floods prepare to sweep houses, farmlands‎ and lives away, there is no word of caution yet by the federal and state governments, which are focusing only on the covid-19 pandemic.

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The Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NIMET) in January 2020 released the Seasonal Rainfall Prediction. The time was early enough for the Federal Government and states to start preventing disasters that could follow, through dredging the waterways, desilting and demolition of structures along waterways.

In 2019, floods affected one hundred and twenty four local governments in Nigeria leading to economic and land losses. Predictably, there are still many homes within the flood plains of rivers Niger and Benue, including at the confluence points, waiting for another disastrous release of water from river Benue in Cameroun. Other inland waters could also overflow their banks.

While saluting the efforts made so far by Nigeria’s Great Green Wall project ‎with regard to afforestation of the otherwise arid and semi-arid parts, a lot is still left to be desired regarding logging in the southern and western parts of Nigeria. Statistics of how many trees are cut down daily from logging, and how many trees are planted as replacement remain dodgy.

As afforestation goes on in the north, indiscriminate deforestation continues in the south. This could encourage natural disasters like gully erosion, hurricanes and their ilk, thereby causing unnecessary deaths, displacement and loss of property. Bangladesh once relocated over one million people due to weather challenges. We are supposed to take that as an example in our emergency preparedness plans.

To forestall natural calamities that could encourage covid-19 to spread like wild fire, Nigeria should anticipate what this season could unfurl.       

About the author

Ihesiulo Grace

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