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The Nigerian Meteorological Agency has lamented the hurdles African countries are faced with to be able to access the N100bn United Nations’ climate fund required to mitigate the impact of climate change in Africa.

Prof. Mansur Matazu, NiMet’s Director-General, while speaking on the closing ceremony of the 2022 edition of the Regional Climate Outlook Forum on the Seasonal Forecasting of Agro-Hydro-Climate Characteristics for the Sahelian and Sudanian Regions of West Africa and Sahel, lamented the inability of African countries to access the fund because of the complexities.

Represented by an official of NiMet, Mailadi Misau, the Director-General, explained that, “There is a UN intervention for the provision of global climate fund, which is supposed to be accessible to all countries, unfortunately, African countries are unable to access this fund because of the complexity of the nature of accessing it.”

He stated that the developed nation had pledged about N100bn annually to combat climate change, especially in Africa, stressing that unfortunately, the process of accessing this fund is so tedious and said he don’t think any African country has been able to access anything significant from the fund.

Prof. Matazu noted that climate change was caused by civilised nations in Europe and America, stressing that, yet the process of accessing funds meant to mitigate its impact had remained herculean.

According to him, “the interesting thing is that Africa did not cause climate change, it was caused essentially by Europe and Americans,” adding that they exploited the situation and damaged the climate and now Africans have to bear the impact.

On the erratic weather conditions across the globe, the Director-General observed that the situation was beyond human control, but explained that it was possible to adapt to or mitigate the effects of adverse weather if a forecast of the expected weather condition could be obtained on time.

The representative of the World Meteorological Organisation, Bernard Gomez, on his part, noted that putting enough funds to mitigate the adverse effect of climate change was a worthy one.