Weather forecast is a very critical service to the aviation sector and contributes about 23 per cent to air travel safety, as that is the percentage of the record of mishaps that are caused by weather globally.
This is the reason why the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET) contribution to air travel is invaluable and in addition to forecasting weather to the aviation industry, NIMET makes significant contribution to agriculture because it predicts the weather for the farmers to know when to cultivate their farms and when to reap their produce.
Like aviation, weather is critically important to the maritime sector; that ships on voyage must rely on 24 hours weather report and feedbacks from its radar.
Due to the vast responsibility bestowed on NIMET, it needs more revenues to attract the right technical personnel, fund its offices located at operational airports and also acquire the needed equipment for weather reading and the training of its personnel.
The Director General of NIMET, Professor Mansur Matazu told THISDAY that the agency plans to commercialise some aspects of its services in order to earn more revenue.
Matazu said that there are too many responsibilities carried out by NIMET that are not recompensed.
“I always tell stakeholders that weather is life and life is weather. Weather has a lot of things to do with human beings and in the socio-economic sector of our country, all of them are weather sensitive and NIMET is the only agency that can advise on weather. We do this advisory in three tiers: one, we provide public weather service at no cost. For instance, the daily weather forecast, seasonal climate prediction, monthly, weekly and the three days update we are giving to water, road and air services are under this public service,” he said.
He explained that second tier is the support service, which NIMET offers to Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of the government in agriculture or any major project, disclosing that before these agencies do anything they must revert to NIMET for weather predictions and the agency does this at no cost.
He said the third tier is tailor made because it is demand specific based on stakeholder, client and sector, which is the provision of tailor made services to agriculture, including downscale seasonal information and updates.
He disclosed that NIMET has deployed a lot of instruments and it has also empowered its crew to handle point forecasts, which has helped to improve farm production and reduced a lot of risks in the system.
“We also partner with the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) for all service providers in the sector, but we have not yet started implementation. We are just at the beginning stage. We, however, started with a pilot scheme whereby we developed a weather mobile meteorology by providing specific forecasts to farmers.
“Also, we do a service that we call cutting calendar for farmers, in each local government, we can give a calendar based on the forecast of the year; what you should do from land clearing and harvesting. This has really helped farmers; every year we invite farmers and other stakeholders especially from rural communities to testify to the public on the advantages of this,” he said.
Matazu said that some of these services presently offered freely to the aforementioned would in the near future be paid for, as the agency has kicked off the plan to commercilaise some of these services.
He said that with the aid of NIMET, Nigerian farmers have increased their yield by 30 per cent and such important service should be paid for in order to sustain the provision of the service, as the agency sustains increasing number of personnel.
“We have seen more than 30 per cent increase in farmers’ yield and quantitatively, we are conducting research by employing our weather and climate information services. So, farmers are getting increasing yield; this has helped us a lot and we see it as another window of commercialisation so that we can charge a token for providing these services to farmers. As you know, more than 70 per cent of Nigerians are farmers, we are just targeting five million as a pilot scheme.
He said that NIMET also hopes to generate revenue from the marine sector, which it also provides service for the shipping industry, even oil and gas and other areas related to maritime.
“Another sector that is of paramount to us is the marine sector; Nigeria is blessed, we have versed land, forest and also we have water. We have about 800 kilometers of coastal land, which include the Niger Delta area. Also, we import a lot of our commodities. There are lots of activities in the maritime sector. As aviation relies on per minute, per second weather information, that is how maritime also relies on us, but unfortunately, they take their marine weather service from the United Kingdom Meteorological office, which is causing Nigeria to lose hundreds of billions of naira annually.
He said NIMET had already established marine stations, which it is currently upgrading.
“Presently, the task team is on the field, doing capacity risk assessment to upgrade. We have procured four automatic marine stations and we are in talks with the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA). I think the time is ripe for us to seal this Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with them in order to begin to provide this service to the industry because the country is losing a lot of revenues by not providing the service,” Matazu added.
