Foundation for Peace Professionals (PeacePro) has taken note of the public rebuttal issued by the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) regarding its report on the estimated loss of nearly N5 trillion in productive capital by market-facing farmers over the past two years.

PeacePro, in a statement issued by its Executive Director, Abdulrazaq Hamzat, welcomed NiMet’s engagement but stressed that the agency’s response does not address the central concern raised in its report 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 localised forecasts.

According to Hamzat, NiMet’s claim that its forecasts were “rated above 90 per cent” 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,” Hamzat said.

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

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