While Nigeria dithers on taking concerted action to combat climate change, its impact on the nation’s economy is unmistakable. For instance, women farmers who constitute 70 to 80 percent of the agriculture labour force in the country are at the mercy of climate change, with a resultant effect on food security. Governments have at best been indifferent.
Climate change, which manifests as flood, drought, erratic rainfall patterns as well as extreme heat and high temperature and their attendant results, such as pest and disease outbreak, has made agricultural development more challenging, its effect reflecting on the nation’s Gross Domestic Product .Lagos is considered one of the most vulnerable states in Nigeria to rising sea levels and flooding.
“It is also expected that the increasing frequency of extreme weather events indicates that year 2021 will likely experience days with extremely high rainfall amounts which may result in flooding.” But the good thing is that Modupe did not just fold her arms and resign to fate. She became innovative. She set up an earthen pond in her compound to culture her fishes, reasoning that the pond generates water from the ground. According to experts, the earthen pond, which is constructed from earth soil, presents natural habitat for fishes.
She continued: “Despite these benefits, I’ve always had fish loss from flood arising from heavy rain. More to it is the fact that fishes get lost in the earthen pond and I would usually engage the service of men – the abokis – to locate them from the pit for me at a fee. Mrs. Erhunmwunsee Osaretin, like Modupe, used to operate two earthen ponds to nuture fish. Her reason for this choice was not farfetched. “It is cheaper and less stressful for a woman”, she said.
“I lost more than N500,000 worth of fishes to the rain that fell two nights ago in Ijebu. This could have been averted if I had prior information on the weather. Then I would have quickly planned ahead of the rain. The rain came in the night when everybody had left the farm, so there was no one around to flush out water in the pond. Usually, when it starts raining, we usually fix the pumping machine to flush out water in the tanks but this happened in the night when there no one was on ground”.
Nonetheless, erratic power supply is another problem her business confronts as she spends more to pump water when there is not electricity.