Man can no longer pretend not to sense that celestial elements are at work bringing about the now proverbial Climate Change sweeping through the planet earth. What with the unusual heat which has sent the forces driving age-long harmattan and cold, its accompanying harbinger, packing from its pristine throne! When we should be having cold weather, it is enervating heat that has come in its place biting hard day and night.In times past, the arrival of harmattan could be as early as close to the end of November, indeed the latter half of November. Those who have occupied themselves with the unusual phenomenon say this development had been foreshadowed with falling of rains this year, stretching far into almost the last day of December, and sometimes when the rain even did fall, it did so pouring in buckets. This observation borne out of studies was forwarded to me believing that it is compatible with the tone and the purpose of this column— pointing to the significance and essence of Nature, its inconceivable magnitude and unassailable power; that Nature is everything. I have Emeritus Professor Layi Egunjobi, of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Ibadan, to thank for forwarding the observation beautifully encapsulated in a write-up to this column. Please, find, therefore, below the thought-provoking, yet sobering article:
Where is harmattan? Nigeria’s vanishing cold season and the question it raises
For generations, December, January and February have meant one thing across much of Nigeria: harmattan. It was the season of dry, dusty winds blowing from the Sahara, cold mornings that sent people reaching for sweaters, cracked lips, dusty cars and hazy skies. Harmattan was so predictable that it shaped farming calendars, travel plans, health advice and even cultural memory.
Yet as the year (2025) ends, Nigerians are asking an unsettling question: “Where is the harmattan?”
Instead of the familiar chilly mornings and dusty breeze, the country has been gripped by unusual heat. From the North to the South, the air feels heavy, hot and uncomfortable. Fans spin endlessly, air conditioners struggle, and people complain of heat rashes rather than cold-induced coughs. The expected seasonal shift simply did not arrive. And this absence should worry us.
The first question to ask is whether this is a one-off anomaly or a symptom of a much deeper problem? One possible explanation lies in climate change, a phenomenon many Nigerians still discuss as something distant or abstract. But climate change is no longer knocking at our door; it is already inside the house. Rising global temperatures are altering weather patterns worldwide, disrupting long-established seasonal cycles. Harmattan depends on specific atmospheric conditions: pressure systems, wind directions and temperature contrasts between the Sahara and the Gulf of Guinea. When these systems are disturbed, the harmattan winds weaken or fail to materialise altogether.
Across the globe, scientists have observed increasing irregularity in seasons: longer heatwaves, delayed rains, unexpected floods and shortened cold periods. Nigeria is not immune. If global warming continues to heat the atmosphere and oceans, traditional patterns like harmattan may become weaker, shorter or increasingly unpredictable.
Another possible factor is environmental degradation closer home. The Sahara Desert, once the primary source of the dry, cold harmattan winds is itself undergoing changes. Desertification, deforestation and land misuse across the Sahel have altered surface temperatures and wind dynamics. When vegetation is stripped and land becomes excessively degraded it affects how heat is absorbed and released into the atmosphere, potentially disrupting the wind systems that drive harmattan. Ironically, while desertification is expanding southwards, the very winds associated with the desert seem to be losing their bite.
Deforestation within Nigerian also deserves scrutiny. Forests play a critical role in regulating local and regional climates. Massive tree loss across the country, whether through logging, charcoal production or urban expansion, has reduced nature’s ability to cool the environment. Without adequate vegetation heat builds up, humidity increases, and the cooling effects that once complemented harmattan conditions are diminished.
But beyond the science, the disappearance of harmattan has social and economic implications. Farmers rely on seasonal patterns to plan cultivation cycles. A disrupted harmattan can affect soil moisture, pest behaviour and crop yields. Public health is also affected. While harmattan often brings respiratory challenges, extreme heat introduces its own dangers: dehydration, heat stress and worsening cardiovascular conditions, especially among the elderly and children.
The absence of harmattan also raises concern about water availability. Prolonged heat increases evaporation rates, dries up surface water faster and puts additional pressure on already strained water resources. In a country where access to clean water remains a challenge, this is no small matter.
The troubling part of this conversation is not just that harmattan appears to be fading, but that Nigeria seems largely unprepared for these shifts. Climate policy remains weak, poorly enforced or inconsistently implemented. Environmental education is limited, and long-term planning often takes a back seat to short-term political concerns. If harmattan, one of the most predictable features of Nigeria’s climate, can disappear without warning, what else might we lose?
This moment should serve as a wake-up call. Government agencies, environmental experts and academic institutions must urgently study this anomaly, not dismiss it as a coincidence. Nigerians deserve clear explanations backed by data, not silence. More importantly, the country must invest seriously in climate adaptation and mitigation: reforestation, sustainable land use, urban planning that reduces heat build-up, and public awareness campaigns about environmental responsibility.
The harmattan’s absence is not just about discomfort; it is a signal. Nature is telling us that the balance we once took for granted is shifting. Ignoring that signal may cost us far more than a cold December morning ever did. If the harmattan can vanish quietly, then the real question is not “why is it hot?” The real question is: what kind of future are we walking into, and are we ready for it?
What lies behind it!
FIRST it must be stated that this title is not original to me. It is the title of a unique book by renowned German writer Herr Herbert Vollmann.
We are today living in a world of perplexities one of which is the climate change. The intensification of this is staring us mankind in the face in nearly every direction we face, especially in matters deriving essentially from Nature. We have had a series of earthquakes in parts of the world.
Scientists have been unable to stop the occurrences of the bowels of the earth over-turning and its larva pouring and moving at an untrammelled speed, wreaking havoc on its seeming unending paths wherever it passes. Hurricanes have stretched human wit to its end. The corridors through which they sweep catastrophically can be predicted with sophisticated scientific gadgets, but not stopped. There are other phenomena that test science and the human wits.
There have been meetings –internationally, regionally and locally aimed at curbing the menace of the climate change, but Mr. Climate Change would not yield. One such international conference took place in Brazil only last November. It was attended by leaders from 197 countries. With the European Union on the attendance register, this brought the number to 198. The conference theme was “Climate Action and Implementation.”
As I did state on the occasion of the conference, the environment of man has external and internal features. In conferences, in conversations, the internal features are usually missing. And it is the internal which are the driving and the determinant factor. The environment is a manifestation of what man carries within him, and so it is said, as within so without. The devastation and the incalculable abuse to which the earth has been subjected are borne out largely of economic activities. The destruction according to scientists has come in various guises—pollution, deep and extensive damage to the earth-crust, emission of unquantifiable amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and the destruction of vegetation and rivers, all largely traceable to the pursuit of modern living.
Scientists have already discovered that the carbon dioxide has altered the stratospheric balance, perforating the ozone layer such that there is unshielded release of harmful ultraviolet radiation, which apart from inflicting skin cancer on man, escalates atmospheric warming. Deformities in fish and animals linked to radiation increases were reported. That was not all that is contained in their report tagged “Our Common Future.”
The scientists also discovered the largest ever hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic. The ultraviolet rays deplete the community of planktons which absorb carbon dioxide. When added to that is the devastation of vegetation, plant life in general that absorbs carbon and through photosynthesis in the activities of Nature Beings also called Elemental Beings, turn it into oxygen which man and animals need, it leads not only to warming, it engenders shortfall in the quantity and quality of oxygen available.
Indeed, it is a tragedy in no small measure. With the gradual extermination of planktons, increased heat and pollution are released into the environment resulting in climatic changes. The warming is laden with the danger of melting ice-lands which is calculated will swell water level by as much as 20 centimetres (8 inches) come the year 2030 which is only five years away and 65cm in 2100. By that time as scientists predict, many coastal lands will be washed off or completely submerged, places such as Bangladesh and parts of Britain and West Africa coastline.
The severity of the climate change and the attendant heat and the gradual but much-noticeable disappearance of harmattan in our land are traceable to deforestation and pollution as a result of unenforced emission regulations.
Some years back, an Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change consisting of 300 leading scientists drew together the results of new studies which indicated that global warming was real. The studies showed that snow cover sharply decreased in the second half of the 80s as the climate warmed up, that glaciers have shrunk and ice had melted.
Between 1972 and 2023, according to Climate Change Indicators, the average portion of North America covered by snow decreased at a rate of about 2, 083 square miles per year. Land gripped by permafrost was thawing and that was supposed to speed up global warming by releasing vast amounts of defrozen carbon dioxide and methane, another green-house gas. The studies predicted that harvests in the United States and Russia would be decimated as green-house effect takes hold.
All of the conferences have been necessitated in the time of great perplexities. But Prophet Isaiah long saw into these times, the End-Time. We read of him saying: “Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand: For God is with us.” (Isaiah 8, 10). It is a time nothing will last that is not done in accordance with the Will of God. God With Us is referred to by Daniel (Daniel 7: 13-14) as the Son of Man and Who both prophets referred to as Imanuel.
Being God with us means as well the Eternal Mediator and is to appear in the End-Time that is also called the time of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth—the great time of perplexity in which one conference follows another, when distrust is everywhere, unrest and uneasiness, when hopelessness spreads ever more.
The conferences point to no other thing than the consequences of what man has brought upon himself. And he is unable to see the way forward because he focuses on only one of two-sided coin of life. What has generally been understood as a danger to the environment has been confined to the devastation of land, rivers and vegetation, as well as industrial pollution through burning of fossil fuel.
This, in itself, arises from a limited definition of environment. What, therefore, is understood by environment? Where does it start and where does it end? If in the definition of man it is not considered complete if due cognizance is not taken of his external as well as his internal features, the description of the environment cannot, similarly, be considered complete without reference to the internal features which may not necessarily be physical.
Can he be regarded as a man without his soul and the animating core inside him, the spirit encased in the soul, both of which cannot be seen? Our environment constitutes that part into which thoughts and speeches and their forms are deposited. The pollution and the devastation of this finer part of the environment are greater than those with which the world seems familiar. And it is the activities in these finer parts that constitute the driving force of devastation and despoilation that eventually manifest physically.
The consequences of this latter kind of pollution have constituted unintended weight on the earth and which pushed it down. The push has brought about a shift in its orbital movement with concomitant striking climatic changes and gravitational pull. As one thing leads to the other there is imbalance with earth and atmospheric movement causing earthquakes and plane crashes in places which have fallen out of rhythm. Human beings are unable to think straight and errors are committed from shrunk horizon.
A turn-around is possible only with man lifting his gaze higher and as individuals who, having come to the awareness, resolving to keep their thoughts first and foremost, pure. All selfishness, economic devastation will disappear in accordance with the Law. Man is the most destructive agent in the whole world, full of learning but bereft of knowledge, victorious knowledge. He must change and become a new person. If he conceitedly and stubbornly clings to the old he will soon find out that his days are numbered. He will be hit like any pestilential vermin in reciprocity of the harm he had caused the earth meant to give him abode and provide him a school. The earth provides his cloak and the materials—food and herbs—which he needs for his nourishment and strength.
There is awakening and cleansing sweeping through the earth which with animating Light pressure is accentuated by the blazing radiation power of The Great Comet, which is the same as the Star of Bethlehem. In the first coming with the Lord Christ, it proclaimed Love that the Lord Jesus Christ is and brought. In this return, it is coming bearing the sword of Justice at the behest of the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit, the Son of Man who is the Eternal Mediator.
In the unique Work, In the Light of Truth, the Grail Message, Abd-ru-shin says: “It is thought that it brings upheavals of an incisive nature. But this Star portends more…Its power sucks the waters up high, brings weather catastrophes and still more. When encircled by its rays the earthquakes. Since the event in Bethlehem there has been nothing like it…The first direct effects have already begun in recent years. For anyone who wishes neither to see nor hear this, and who does not perceive how ridiculous it is still to maintain that all the extraordinary things which have already happened are of everyday occurrence, there is naturally no help.”
