El Nino: How the Met Dept became a punching bag for politicians despite issuing warnings for months

As the short-rain season in Kenya takes shape, several counties are plunged into the deep waters of the devastating effects of heavy downpours and flooding.

The world is experiencing a return of the El Nino phenomenon which is characterised by excess rainfall and flooding in the East Africa region.

Photographs and footage of submerged villages, cars and people wading in flooded city streets are making rounds online, and so are posts and news articles of people accusing the Kenya Meteorological Department of sabotaging El Nino preparedness efforts.

On Wednesday, Wajir Governor Ahmed Abdullahi appeared on Citizen TV to criticise the Met Department, attributing the late preparedness for mitigating the ongoing El Nino's devastating effects to misinformation by the state agency.

Abdullahi who also serves as the Council of Governors (CoG) vice chair, claimed that the Met Department gave inconsistent updates, leading to a lack of urgency in preparedness efforts

“The early warning system that we rely on is the meteorological department that is giving mixed signs. When the media hypes the same, yes, it scared away a lot of pre-preparedness that we could have done,” the governor said.

Governor Abdullai joined a section of Kenyans who have been accusing the meteorological department and the government at large of failing Kenyans through their ‘inaccurate’ weather forecasts.

NINETY-NINE PER CENT LIKELIHOOD

At the start of May, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) warned El Nino will return this year following a three-year La Nina phase.

FAO said the phenomenon was forecast to return in June, with dry weather conditions expected in key cropping areas of Central America, Southern Africa and Far East Asia, while excessive rainfall and possible flooding were foreseen in Near East Asia and East Africa.

The Met Department would issue an update two weeks later, warning that El Nino was expected in Kenya between October and December, with a possibility of extending to January 2024.

Come August 30, the department addressed a press conference warning of a 99 per cent likelihood of high rainfall across parts of the country as El Nino returns.

In the warning, which was widely covered by mainstream media, Met Director David Gikungu outlined the areas where heavy continuous rainfall was expected and noted that the rains would begin in September, peak in October and go on until January.

Late September, Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua shared an update acknowledging the Met Department’s warning, saying he met with governors, cabinet secretaries, and local and international partners “to put our heads together in order to avert disaster.”

After reports that there will be no El Nino rains but above-average rainfall, Met’s Dr Gikungu gave an interview to Citizen TV on October 2, reiterating that the El Nino rains will indeed happen as anticipated.

The department clarified the same on its social media platforms.

‘NO EL NINO’

The confusion began when President William Ruto on October 22 said the Met Department had scaled down its El Nino alert to short rains, telling a church service in Nairobi’s Dagoretti area, "You see the department has now said there will be no El Nino, we will only have significant rains, which is even better for us to get to our farms and produce more."

He even linked the rainfall Kenya is receiving to the prayers he conducted at the Nyayo National Stadium in February, saying they had paid off.

"There are those who criticised us when we prayed for rains at Nyayo stadium. They said a whole president is praying for rain. Now see, we have more rains than we have had in four years, that is God's doing," Ruto said. 

But the Met Department did not independently speak on the purported scaling down of its earlier advisory.

Three weeks later, on November 10, Gachagua made the Met Department boss apologise over the government’s miscommunication on the matter after summoning him to address the current state of rains in the country.

“I want to point out that as initially given in the forecast, we have El Nino in this short rainy season 2023 and we do apologize for the lack of communication or miscommunication because that was a big mistake but we are sorry about that, but moving forward let us prepare ourselves for enhanced rainfall as a result of El Nino phenomena as we are in,” Dr Gikungu stated.

Gikungu further urged Kenyans to take caution as the El Nino rains could continue up to the first quarter of 2024, after which DP Gachagua thereafter said, “I think the matter is settled, El Nino it is.”

Now, some political leaders are criticising their counterparts for confusing Kenyans with misleading information instead of letting the Met Department issue weather advisories independently.

Among them is Kisii senator Richard Onyonka, who on Tuesday said political leaders should leave the weatherman do their job instead of giving contradicting information.

“Sometimes science can be misinterpreted. I think as political leaders, we should just leave the Meteorological Department alone. Let them make the mistakes and correct them. Can politicians accept that our job is to politick and allow the Meteorological Department to do its job?” the Senator told Citizen TV.

He blamed President Ruto for the confusion, saying previous heads of state never gave directives about the weather.

“I don’t remember President Kibabi, Uhuru or Moi or indeed President Kenyatta talking about the weather,” Onyonka said.

“It is just the way we have the Ministry of Health; the Director of Medical Services and the teams talk to the public, the way it was during COVID. That is how systems run.”

According to the Kenya Red Cross Society, over 52 people have lost their lives due to the ongoing rains while more than 9 others have been injured.

The humanitarian organisation says over 56,500 people have been hit by the raging floods that have affected 19 counties.