Adekunle Jimoh in the Nation (Nigeria): Extreme climatic and physical events of the Hurricane Katrina proportion are possible in coastal Nigeria, a geographer, Professor Akin Mabogunje has said. The Professor of Geography spoke yesterday at the opening of the second joint international conference of the University of Ilorin (UNILORIN), and University of Cape Coast, Ghana, in Ilorin, Kwara State. The conference was entitled: “Climate change and sustainable development.”Mabogunje predicted that the surges in Lagos could have unimaginable consequences, adding: “For West Africa in particular, the significance of this exigency is the fact that our colonial masters in the past deemed it fit to locate most of our capital cities in the coastal areas.”
He said: “It could be claimed that Africa and, in particular, West Africa, has been providentially protected from all these extreme events and, therefore, need not be overly bothered about the probability of their occurrence. They should be ready to deal with the consequences of their incidence. No scientist can subscribe to such position….”
Flag map of Nigeria by Darwinek, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
No comments:
Post a Comment