In this interview, director general and chief executive officer of the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), Prof Mansur Bako Matazu says he intends to make the agency a major service provider to African countries and, among other things, overhaul its administrative and structural settings to make it more business-like.
Ime Akpan
Effects of weather on air travel
You cannot separate weather and aircraft operations because flying takes place within the atmosphere and in NIMET, we monitor the atmosphere, the circulation, the symbols and the weather that takes place within the atmosphere.
The very component of our focus is the seasonal rainfall prediction which we provide to the public which we issued out as early as February. The focus is that we predicted that the country will experience normal rainfall patterns. And this pattern entails on different components of the rainfall.
Very critical component of this forecast is the aeronautical meteorology forecast which we provide to the aviation industry. In the whole aviation industry, per minute, per second operation, especially the Act of flying depends on weather focus.
Whether weather is good, you have a smooth flight and when weather is bad, you have a bumpy flight. What we do is that the accuracy of our focus is more than 90 per cent. We provide this forecast at the airport level, we provide terminal Aerodrome forecasts. We also provide Meter forecast.
We also give signate alert if there is any fast growing weather system around the airport or within the vicinity of the descent of 50 nautical miles. We are present in all the 24 airports and all the 4 international airports. We have independent forecasting offices in which we provide these forecasts.
Provision of Doppler weather radar
Doppler weather globally is capital intensive project but what affected the initial installation in Maiduguri and Yola was insecurity at that time and engineers handling them at that time are coming back.
One thing with Doppler weather radar is that it monitors fast moving weather systems. In Lagos, we have done some upgrade and in Abuja at that time; Port Harcourt is ok.
Doppler radar enhances our charting of extreme events and especially around airports and one of such radars covers 400 kilometers. By the time you have six, you will see beyond Nigeria.
You know weather has no boundaries and with this, you are able to monitor and chart. Of course, we have the components that our engineers are getting trained, especially to man it. It is a very important project and we are not implementing it in a hurry. You have to make sure you get it right.
Services provided for the aviation industry
Regularly, we provide updates of our forecasts as it affects the industry. Whenever, there are significant weather changes, like in the beginning of the rainy season, in the south, it is associated with thunderstorm and stormy weather. Where we are now is that the southwest, like Lagos is experiencing August break or what we popularly call anomalous August weather.
The main activities now are concentrating in the north central and the extreme north. Many states have been flooded; even Lagos was flooded recently.
We provide forecast especially of windshield which is the highest risk factor with regard to aircraft operations. So we have low level windshield alert system around the airport to inform the pilots through the Air Traffic Controllers (ATCs) of intending adverse weather effects and also provide any relevant updates of weather to the aeronautical meteorology community.
We have other infrastructure at the airports like the airport pilot briefing room which we are remodelling now. We encourage all stakeholders to patronise and take weather forecasts very seriously. It is all about efficiency, safety in the industry.
Regularity of crew taking briefs about the weather
Presently our directorate of public relations is organising a stakeholder workshop for all airport managers. Their dispatchers do come to collect the updates. But we always encourage that the flight crew should be coming for briefing so that they would be able to interact with our experts and professionals.
We will also be doing some of the demonstrations using virtual platforms which we have upgraded at the airports. The response is very good from the airlines, especially with the season, now is the active weather system in the country. But there is still room for improvement.
To do this, we are creating awareness. Our public relations is organising a stakeholder sensitisation workshops in the industry. Even journalists will be invited to sensitise the stakeholders especially the airline operators that they take weather forecast very serious and integrate it into their flight plans.
NiMet domiciled in the ministry of aviation
We are domiciled in the aviation ministry and we are very comfortable with it. We get our revenue from the industry based on our enabling Act. That also provides us additional strength to offer our services to other sectors.
So, we are in no way, limited to providing services to other sectors. We are even getting more. When aviation operation is optimal, revenue comes in and we are very much comfortable in the aviation industry.
It shows the relevance of weather. Even if we are taken to agriculture or anywhere, we will still be offering services to the aviation industry. In Aviation, per minute, per second operation depends on weather and so we are very much comfortable.
In parts of Africa, when we travel, we also appreciate Nigeria because we are more comfortable in the aviation industry than most of our sister agencies in other Ministries.
Funding and equipment maintenance
Recently, we discussed our source of funding from the Establishment Act; we get our percentage of air ticket, en-route charges. This makes us very fairly comfortable in terms of acquisition of infrastructure, especially hi-tech infrastructure for weather monitoring, weather forecasting and dissemination to users.
Another window was diversification of our services. So, since aviation is just one of the sectors we provide our services to, we are expanding into marine observation and our services into agriculture.
We want to leverage on this to relay our services to the farmers and in collaboration with service providers. That is another window. Government funding has been very encouraging even during the COVID-19; we got 100 per cent of our government funding and the ministry is also assisting us by providing some interventions, especially under the aviation security funding and also the BASA funds.
We are really comfortable and we are in the process of acquiring new equipment and also upgrading.
Offshore services
What we intend to do is to transform from NiMet manning visibility to NIMET getting into relevance; offering our services to countries like Liberia, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Mozambique and Gambia. Initially, it was under the voluntary membership partnership of World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) but we are offering the services for three initially but that gave us a huge visibility and relevance. Now, UNDP is sponsoring our intervention with The Gambia. Presently our facilitators are in Banjul. They have been there for more than two years and we are getting some funding from that. Also WMO and the African Development Bank are making Nigeria to be Africa’s original hub to assist other countries bring (other) projects. It is really giving us a window, relevance and this will greatly improve our revenue.
Repositioning of NiMet, projections and challenges
Even though I am three months in office, I have been in the agency for seven years and have been in different technical directorates.
Also, I have interfaced with the directorates. You know that weather service is getting more visible and more relevant because of climate change.
We came up with policy thrust and based on the full enabling critical elements that help you to function; observation and infrastructure upgrade and of course, dissemination outreach limitation and communication with the users. These are the critical elements.
Based on this, we set up a policy thrust, came up with eight-point agenda and I will mention few of them. One of it is improving government and institutional setting.
With this, we are overhauling the whole administrative, structural setting of the organisation especially and be business-like just like the private sector driven agency that will be result based, efficiency and institutional framework and of course upgrading of our infrastructure especially weather monitoring and observation infrastructure.
We just mentioned the Doppler weather. We are doing the automatic radio station; we are doing the manual radio station. We are also doing the upper air and air quality component and all that. Of course also improving our climate services, how NiMet is making impact moving from just making forecast on whether there is going to be rain.
We are transforming import based forecast to make sure that both the weather we do will have impact with the amount of rain or this amount of heat wave will impact on health and also improving dissemination of our forecast for effective user communication.
I can tell you that since I came in the last three months, we have dedicated a certain percentage of our spending to training of staff at all times.
At any time, every week, there are staff of NiMet in one part of the country or the other undergoing training.
There are staff in Lagos, Katsina and many other places and outside the country undergoing training and this involves staff from all the cadre; from the lower level, drivers’ level to the managerial level. We feel this will make our staff more comfortable and improve their productivity and service delivery as much as possible.
