To reduce the impact of flooding on farmers, and local communities in Nigeria, the Human and Environmental Development Agenda, (HEDA Resource Center) has called on the Federal Government, amongst other relevant stakeholders to inform, educate smallholder farmers, and vulnerable communities through early warnings and actions system.
The Executive Secretary of HEDA Resource Centre, Sulaimon Arigbabu, said this while speaking at a high-level advocacy dialogue and launch of two reports on flood impact and access to climate information in Nigeria themed, “protecting smallholder farmers and vulnerable communities from climate-related shocks: implement early warning systems for food security and livelihood resilience in Nigeria” in Abuja, organized by HEDA in collaborations with African Activista for Climate Justice, and OXFAM.
He explained that Early Warning System (EWS) is the set of capacities needed to generate and disseminate timely and meaningful climate warning information to enable individuals, communities and organizations threatened by hazards to take necessary proactive actions and act swiftly to reduce the possibility of harm or losses.
He said EWS are vital in providing actionable information that can empower farmers and communities to anticipate, prepare for, and mitigate the impacts of climate-induced disasters such as floods and droughts.
Identifying climate change as one of the threats to food security, and how food insecurity can threaten national security, Sulaimon said, Nigeria needs to build infrastructures and systems to protect communities.
He said the most important intervention to make is to help the people help themselves by empowering them to be their own first responders.
He said, “climate change is a reality in Nigeria and the people who are most affected by climate change are community people, and farmers are the most vulnerable. and the moment farmers are impacted by climate change then our food security is threatened, even national security is threatened when food security is threatened, we see the recent protest in the country where people protested against hunger, and one of the reasons why we are having hunger is majorly impact of climate change and then we have secondary impact of climate change which is conflict and because of climate induced conflict where mostly we have farmers-herders crisis, many farmers are unable to go to their farm; so these are also reasons why we have the issues of hunger. So the thing to take away from here is that aside from the fact that Nigerians need to build the infrastructure and its system to protect our communities, the most important intervention we can make is to help the people to help themselves, to empower them to be their own first responders.
“We are saying that with information and knowledge, people’s vulnerability, exposure to climate change will be reduced and that is the beginning of resilience. when we communicate information early, for instance the Nigerian meteorological agency provides its seasonal climate prediction early in the year, after that the Nigeria Hydrological service also comes out with their own predictions; the most refined after that is that NEMA is also stepping out to say what will be the strategies to mitigate this, but other agencies that needs to act on it at the state, local and federal level, they don’t act adequately, until the flooding comes, where we will budget about N3bn per state and a lot of this money will not get to the people who are impacted.
“How about given them information and knowledge that can protect their livelihoods, that can help them to protect their lives, that can help them to make decisions that will not put them in harms way when eventually our extreme weather events happen. Because Weather events will happen but our preparedness and action is what turns it either to a disaster or not. events are just events, it is how they impact us that make it a disaster or not; and we are saying, we can prevent disasters in our communities, in modern areas, with early warnings and actions system; and so the whole essence of gathering here today is to see how we can push that the relevant agencies, already Nigeria has 70% of what it takes to put in early warning and action systems, the missing link is the political will and action to do it; we have the information, we have agencies that are on top of their duty in gathering information; oft cause they can be supported to do better but they are already having information available. we need to make information available through early warnings and action systems. and they should be community based, it should be organic enough.” Arigbabu said.
Also speaking, Commissioner for Agriculture, Benue State, Moses Ogbaji said the practice of smart agriculture would bring about food security in Nigeria.
Encouraging other states in Nigeria to practice smart agriculture, Moses said Benue state, which is the food basket of the nation practices smart agriculture.
He advised farmers to use drought resistant varieties, adding that all crops have their pest and resistant varieties.
He said, “What I think that will bring about security in Nigeria is to practice smart agriculture. let us adopt a smart agriculture. We have many from Benue here, and we are thee food basket. We are ahead of you because we are practicing what we call smart agriculture. And I will leave the secret to you briefly.
“In Benue State, we are practicing smart agriculture; That is what we are doing basically, this is what we are doing. We are using early maturing varieties. I encourage all states in Nigeria, that is my request to the Commissioners is that they should practice smart agriculture. And if they have a problem with that, let them come and see what we are doing with it.”
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