N3Trillion Capital Wipeout: PeacePro Says NiMet Failed To Address Key Concerns In Rebuttal, Presents Counterarguments

The Foundation for Peace Professionals (PeacePro) submitted on Thursday that it has taken note of the public rebuttal issued by the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) regarding its report on the estimated loss of nearly ₦5 trillion in productive capital by market-facing farmers over the past two years.

PeacePro in a statement issued by its Executive Director, Mr Abdulrazaq Hamzat and made available to Team@orientactualmags.com welcomed NiMet’s engagement but however stressed that the agency’s response failed to address the key concerns raised in its report in which the organization asserted that the widespread destruction of farmer capital across Nigeria is driven by overlapping failures in market coordination, insecurity, price distortions, and repeated agro season disruptions, including the consequences of poorly interpreted, poorly communicated, or poorly localized forecasts.

According to Mr Hamzat, NiMet’s assertion that its forecasts were ‘rated above 90%’ by stakeholders does not automatically translate into effective real world outcomes for millions of farmers.

‘In agriculture, the true measure of forecast utility is not internal rating summaries or global benchmarks. The real test is whether farmers were able to plant correctly, avoid preventable losses, achieve expected yields, secure market stability, and preserve capital for the next production cycle’ he said.

PeacePro added that Nigeria experienced the opposite in 2024–2025, including distress harvesting, price crashes, forced sell offs, rising post-harvest losses, and growing farmer exit pressures.

Mr Hamzat further explained that PeacePro did not claim that NiMet alone caused the crisis.

‘Our report clearly stated that the losses resulted from a combination of policy-induced price distortions, weak market stabilization, insecurity and disrupted farming corridors, post-harvest failures, excessive import pressure, and poor forecast reliability at the farmer level’ he said.

PeacePro however noted that NiMet’s forecasts remain a critical national input, and where farmers repeatedly report that weather guidance was misleading, mistimed, or not localized enough for real planting decisions, such complaints deserve serious institutional attention, not dismissal.

According to Hamzat, PeacePro has documented complaints made by farmers from states across Nigeria’s six geo-political zones, particularly among small and medium scale commercial producers who supply Nigeria’s urban markets.

‘These complaints include delayed rainfall onset patterns not matching advisories, unexpected dry spells during critical planting windows, flooding events that exceeded warnings, poor dissemination to grassroots farmers, and limited extension translation of NiMet outputs into actionable decisions’ the statement said.

PeacePro reiterated that when farmers suffer repeated cycle losses, the result is capital destruction, and this cannot be erased by generalized claims of performance ratings while adding that its report was aimed at warning Nigeria against the dangerous trend of treating farmers as shock absorbers for inflation and food politics.

‘A government cannot claim success because prices temporarily decline if that decline is produced by producer losses, forced sell-offs, collapsing rural reinvestment, and structural weakening of production capacity’ Mr Hamzat said.

To resolve the issue responsibly, PeacePro called for an independent national review of the 2024–2025 agro-season involving independent private farmers, smallholder farmers, farmer associations, commodity unions, independent researchers, private sector aggregators, state ADPs, and non-governmental observers.

Such a review, PeacePro said, should focus on actual farmer outcomes, localized forecast effectiveness, yield realities, post-harvest losses, market distortions, and capital retention across production cycles.

PeacePro added that it is not in any way interested in institutional blame game, but rather in preventing national food dependency, rural collapse, and the long-term weakening of Nigeria’s agricultural economy.

‘NiMet’s rebuttal should not end this conversation. It should open a national reckoning on what farmers are truly experiencing’ the statement concluded-Team@orientactualmags.com  Do you have any information you wish to share with us? Do you want us to cover your event or programme? Kindly send SMS to 08035023079,  08059100286, 09094171980 or get in touch via orientactualmag@gmail.com.  Thank you