By ZAKAA LAZARUS
From cholera in flooded streets to conflict in drying fields, experts warns Nigeria’s health, security, and economy are under siege.
In Maiduguri, floodwaters rose last year and took cholera with them. In Benue, rains failed and herders moved south, and violence followed. In Lagos, heatwaves sent elderly patients to hospitals with heart complications.
For millions of Nigerians, climate change is no longer a forecast. It is the water in their homes, the empty farms, the hospital bills, and the fear of the next disaster.
At a media roundtable in Lagos the Nigerian Academy of Science (NAS) delivered a stark verdict: without urgent action at state and community levels, climate change will erase decades of development and push Nigeria’s health, security and economic systems to the brink.
The theme was Climate Change, Health and the Nigerian Reality.” The message was simpler: this is an emergency.
Professor Chinedum Babalola, Public Affairs Secretary of NAS, opened the session with a list that sounded like a hospital report.
“Flooding continues to trigger cholera and dysentery. Heatwaves are worsening cardiovascular diseases. Changing rainfall patterns are threatening food production and nutrition. Deteriorating air quality is increasing asthma and other respiratory illnesses,”
Quoting the World Health Organisation, Prof.Chinedum said “the single biggest health threat of the 21st century.”
But the burden is no longer just physical. Wale Fatade, science communication expert, told journalists about a new patient profile showing up in clinics: young people with anxiety, not about exams, but about the planet.
“We’re seeing PTSD after floods. Depression after losing farms. What experts now call ‘eco-anxiety’,” Fatade said. “Rising temperatures are also expanding malaria and dengue fever. Droughts are deepening malnutrition.”
His charge to the media was direct: stop the “parachute reporting.”
“Don’t just show up when the dam breaks. Humanize the data. Track recovery. Explain why the water came in the first place,” he said.
If health is where climate change is felt, security is where it explodes.
In the lead paper, Emeritus Professor Babajide Alo, Chairman, Board of the Centre for Environmental Human Resources Development, painted a country under pressure from all sides.
“Desertification in the North. Coastal erosion in the South. Flooding in the Middle Belt. Erratic rainfall everywhere,” said Alo, a Professor of Chemistry and former DVC, Academics & Research, University of Lagos.
He described it as an existential challenge.”
As grazing lands shrink and harvests fail, farmer-herder conflicts have intensified. As water gets scarce, youths are pushed into crime or onto dangerous migration routes.
“Climate stress is a risk multiplier,” Alo said. “It’s fueling violent extremism and banditry across the Sahel.”
The people paying the highest price, he noted, are already vulnerable: women fetching water further each day, youths with no farms to inherit, fishers watching coastlines disappear, and displaced families living in camps.
“Climate displacement is a crisis within a crisis,” Alo said. “It brings trauma, depression, and the loss of everything people have built.”
Nigeria is not without a plan. The country has submitted Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the UN, joined the Great Green Wall, and launched erosion control programmes.
But Alo said the plans stop at Abuja.
“Implementation is still largely federal. Many states don’t have climate policies, budgets, or even a desk officer for climate,” he said. “Yet 80% of the impacts are felt at state and LGA level.”
“The impacts of climate change are mostly borne by states, yet subnational climate governance remains weak,” he warned. “Without them, our net-zero by 2060 target is at risk.”
To meet its UN commitments, Nigeria has set hard targets: cut emissions 29% by 2030, 32.2% by 2035, and reach net-zero by 2060.
The roadmap includes ending routine gas flaring by 2030, planting 25 million trees every year, pushing renewable energy and electric vehicles, and building 2,000 climate-resilient primary healthcare centres by 2030.
The price tag: $337 billion between 2026 and 2035.
“That’s not just government money,” Alo said. “We need domestic investment, private sector capital, and sustained international climate finance.”
His solution was not more top-down directives. It was local.
Empower traditional rulers and community groups. Use indigenous knowledge on water and farming. Put women and youths in climate decision rooms. Invest in climate education, sustainable agriculture, ecosystem restoration, and water management.
Both Babalola and Fatade ended with the same appeal to journalists: change the frame.
This is not just an “environment” story. It is a health story, a food story, a jobs story, a security story.
“The media is the bridge between complex science and everyday Nigerians,” Babalola said.
The Experts noted the discussions align with SDGs 3, 6, 11 and 13 — health, water, cities and climate — and with growing ESG expectations for government and business.
As Nigeria braces for more intense floods, longer heatwaves and deeper food insecurity, the scientists left one thought: the next 5 years will decide the next 50.
“Climate change is not coming,” Babalola concluded. “It is here. Strong governance, sustained investment, and action at the grassroots will determine if we build a resilient future, or pay a much higher price later.”
Outside the hall in Lagos, rain was falling. Inside, the question was whether anyone was ready for when it doesn’t stop.
