Nigeria highly vulnerable to climate change despite contributing to it very little.
Its location, poverty, poor infrastructure and other socio-economic challenges make it more prone to disaster impact.
Technological limitations and weak economy reduce its adaptive capacity.
Strengthening infrastructure, warning and monitoring systems and reducing deforestation can build resilience.
Nigeria is one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world, owing to its location, socio-economic challenges, poverty, infrastructural gaps and low adaptive capacity. This is despite the very small contribution the country, and the rest of Africa, has to global warming.
Further, the anthropogenic global warming inducing the climate change impacts is being exacerbated by the country's high deforestation rate — one of the worst in the world, said environmentalist Desmond Majekodunmi.
Nigeria’s technological limitations and weak economy erode its adaptive capacity, according to Salisu Dahiru, former director-general of the country’s National Council on Climate Change (NCCC).
He said the easily detectable signs of climate change are rising temperatures and rainfall pattern that are usually disruptive. The country's agriculture is rain-fed and is impacted by any break in rainfall patterns and high temperatures / draught, he added. “We need finance for adaptation.”
Alongside, the country also needs seeds / crop varieties that can adapt to the changing climate and to do this, research institutes should be adequately funded, the expert added.
Moreover, global warming affects the various climatic zones differently, said Dahiru. The coastline, for instance, is affected by coastal erosion, high tide and flooding, as well as gully erosion. The far north is affected by soil and sheet erosion, as well as flooding as a result of silted rivers that cannot contain storm water, he noted.
Nigeria's plans to deal with these challenges were disjointed in the past, when the federal ministries of agriculture, water resources and energy were working independently to address the impact of climate change, said Dahiru.
The Federal Ministry of Environment, which was responsible for coordinating the climate activities of the other ministries, was overwhelmed. “A country can’t deal with climate change that way,” said Dahiru.
He noted that there are two types of responses: Adaptation and mitigation. The latter requires a great amount of science and technology and this translates to huge financial investment, which is scarce in Nigeria. Adaptation was a better option, he opined.
To help identify and solve climate-related issues, the Nigerian government in 2024 produced the Nigeria Risk Analysis, a project of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) in partnership with UNICEF. It was created with the goal of reducing hazard impact via effective preparedness and mitigation measures.
Flooding, both riverine and coastal, cause massive destruction across the country. But various coping mechanisms have been identified to manage flood situations, involving both governmental and non-governmental agencies.
Enhancing flood early warning systems, strengthening infrastructure resilience, improving urban planning and building codes and community-based flood risk management were some of the measures mentioned by NEMA in the risk analysis.
Others included enhance stakeholder collaboration, relocation people from high-risk areas, integrating climate risk into development planning, improving data collection and risk monitoring and promoting sustainable land and water management.
Helping people diversify their livelihood options and increasing humanitarian assistance and social protection can also go a long way, the document added.
Finally, the massive destruction of Nigeria's forests needs to be immediately addressed, Majekodunmi pointed out. This, he added, can be done by protecting the remaining forests and calling for a national tree planting emergency. Only then can we have any hope of avoiding the catastrophic consequences of the climate change that are being unleashed upon us, “as nature bound by the universal, immutable laws of reaction is obliged to respond to our destructive ways measure for measure”, the environmentalist warned.