Even with the Wet season now in motion, nighttime heatwaves are not letting Nigerian city dwellers get the feeling because making the distinction between a cool and warm climate is pretty much impossible. Analysts blame methane gas emitted by households for this dysfunction – they see it coming from the way wastes are disposed of.

The accusing finger in the past over who is the chief emitter of planet-warming greenhouse gases had been pointing to the direction of oil companies who fail to efficiently dispose of their energy carcasses, which could be recaptured and recycled for other purposes.

When it comes to methane emission specifically, humans, and strictly households are the third major polluter after Industry 4.0 and animal agriculture. And so, a sort of think-thank gathered in Port Harcourt, Rivers State to discuss ways to bring the situation under control.

What do you do with your waste after celebrations? Open this thread to know how to handle waste responsibly and make every celebration eco-friendly! 🌱🌍

#WasteManagement #EcoFriendlyCelebrations #LAWMAcares pic.twitter.com/gyzIp94b40

— LAWMA (@Lawma_gov) April 2, 2024

ALSO READ: How far can $75m go towards building Nigeria’s climate change resilience?

It starts with those responsible deciding on a change that demands recycling and making use of proper waste disposal channels like the ones public services provide. This was part of the ideas the Africa Initiative for Transparency and Responsibility Leadership (AfriTAL) tried to teach when it gathered experts in the fields of health, agriculture and the environment to map out an escape route.

I’m sure that every Nigerian today sleeps and wakes up with heat. That should be of concern to everybody. Was it like that in the past? No, what has suddenly led to this? AfriTAL Executive Director and Project Coordinator, Methane Abatement Programme, Dr. Ogbeifun Brown asked the Port Harcourt gathering.

His question though might seem rhetoric, but the spate of makeshift landfills springing up in neighbourhoods makes the answer obvious.

Sadly, the consequences are here, hence a realisation that active steps ought to be taken that go beyond government or private sector intervention, which is already going on.

Dr. Brown sees direct solutions in a reversal of what have been known to be the problems for several years. First, many of our garbage cans are open; many of our waste dumps are open within our environment, for instance.

The results, according to the expert, will begin to show if we decide to do better by bagging our waste from the house level, before putting it in the garbage can, then we cover it, that is within the environment, then secondly at the larger scale, within the community, maybe the local government, all those baggage we expose into the landfills, can we begin to ensure that we bury them properly?

Simple things like that can help our villagers or our communities to know very well that there are things that we do to help abate methane in our environment.

To guide the populace on ways to cope with an impending heatwave sweeping across both the north and south, the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) in early April carved up the country into categories that indicate the degree of heat exposure to be expected.

Heat Index forecast for 4th April 2024

i. Heat stress is the product of so many factors — humidity, sun, wind (ventilation), hydration, clothing and physical fitness.

ii. As we expect rains to fall in some parts of the south, this may temporarily reduce the temperatures over… pic.twitter.com/bbB1S0DxQL

— NiMet (@nimetnigeria) April 4, 2024

NiMet cut up every region into five distinct divisions, which carried the labels: Normal, Caution, Extreme Caution, Danger and Extreme Danger.

Based on the map signal, it is mainly northern Nigeria residents that are in the severe zone and so they have been alerted to take action. This means to avoid outings happening at the hottest time of the day and also to stay hydrated.

Ayodele Johnson

Ayodelé is a Lagos-based journalist and the Content and Editorial Coordinator at Meiza. All around the megacity, I am steering diverse lifestyle magazine audiences with ingenious hacks and insights that spur fast, informed decisions in their busy lives.