By Dirisu Yakubu & Fortune Eromosele

The Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency, NIHSA, in collaboration with the Nigerian Meteorological Agency, NIMET Tuesday commenced training on flood monitoring and assessment with special emphasis on the use of sentinel data.

The two-day regional training on Multi-Scale Flood Monitoring and Assessment Services for West Africa, MIFMASS, Centre for Space Science Technology Education, CSSTE Consortium under the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security and Africa, GMES, held at NIHSA headquarters, Abuja.

In his opening address, Director General of NIHSA, Engr. Clement Nze said the duty of the agency is to give advisory services on flooding in areas that may be affected in the country, thus seeking ways to avoid same. The DG emphasized that for forecasting to be effective, the use of data and satellite is necessary even as he called on government and relevant stakeholders to put premium on them.

He said, “Proper forecasting using data, gray data, ground data, and observation from the satellite, will enhance and make a robust prediction which will make for early actions to ensure that the communities at risk are delivered from such disasters such as loss of lives and property. This will also equip people to be able to apply data, observe from the satellite and do proper forecasting and modelling.

“There are levels of operations, mandate and responsibilities. For us as a forecasting agency, we are at the upstream sector of flood related disasters. We are like prophets, seers for we see ahead of time before the events begin to happen. Our duty is mainly advisory.

Similarly, Prof. Sani Mashi, Director General, Nigerian Meteorological Agency, maintained that without satellite monitoring, it would be difficult, if not impossible to have reliable results to show actions taken against flooding in Nigeria.

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According to him, “We at NIMET have the national mandate to measure the weather of the country, to provide the necessary information and services that will enable Nigerians take informed decision.

“We are for instance very important as strategic partners to NIHSA, because they will make their own prediction. They have to look at the prediction of the weather. This implies that wherever they move, we have to move along with them.”

He lamented the performance of the state and local governments in accessing and disseminating information provided by the agency relating to weather, adding that whatever is done at the federal level should be replicated across other tiers of government.

He continued: “Unfortunately, not much effort is happening at the state and particularly at the local government level. Each state is supposed to have an emergency management agency and local governments also need to have emergency management committees too.

“This means someone needs to be on ground to advice the people at the grassroots when we release our forecast. There is actually big disconnect here and much needs to be done particularly at the local level,” he said.

On his part, Director, Centre for Space Science Technology Education, CSSTE, Dr. Ganiyu Agbaje stressed the importance of the training, saying “there are already traditional ways of predicting flood and trying to monitor or manage it, but adding observation, satellite, imagery, will improve the efficiency of prediction and will make it easy for us to actually locate people who are really affected.

“The training itself is not to teach them how to do prediction per say, but to have additional data to improve their prediction.”

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