No one who watched water force its way from Alau Dam in Maiduguri or more recently in Niger State of Nigeria will any longer be so dismissive of what post-humanists are saying. Post-humanists have long insisted that we must accord non-human entities (water, weather, trees and the likes) capacity to act.
That is, philosophers or theorists of post-human persuasion argue that these entities have agency or the capacity to act. The peculiar manner these entities act is what is known as agentian realism in their language, a very persuasive claim when one listens to leading voices such as Raisi Braidotti, arguably the most influential voice in that camp of reasoning.
In Nigeria, the capacity of non-human entities to act, mostly in very destructive manner, has prompted more prayerful responses than technically sophisticated ones. People or communities praying for more rains or for drought to go away is not an uncommon practice. Hitherto, the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMET) and the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) predict more alarms and respond to disaster than prevent same.
There seems to be something new. It is possible Intervention is the late comer in knowing this but, whether that is true or not, it seems scenario simulation is now part of the checklist in terms of containing agentian realism. That is what observant readers may notice in the last of the riders of the lead story in the Nigerian daily, Blueprint on August 11th, 2025.
If it is something that has been going on, then it suggests that it could be scaled up. If it is a new dimension, then it points to where ‘we’ may no longer feel so helpless, at least at the level of the basic intelligence about the many ways climate change could unfold.
As they say in global health governance so it also should be in climate change operations: “early detection, early action”. If the slogan has enabled global health governance to be the most successful domain in the history of global governance, then there may be no reasons not to borrow and adapt it to climate change, more so in Nigeria where it seems there is the least mental and infrastructural preparedness for the many manifestations of the climate change phenomenon.
