By Frank Momoh
The Director General of the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), Prof. Mansur Bako Matazu, has said the provision of marine tailored forecast services and operations by the agency which is at advanced stage will save Nigeria and federal government several billions of naira which is presently being provided by foreigners outside the country.
The DG while fielding questions from Reporters at the sideline of the GCRF-Africa SWIFT Workshop on the Pre-Tested 3 Users and Co-Production, expressed optimism that with the approval of the budgetary provision by Federal Government through the Ministry of Aviation and the synergy with NIMASA and NPA the forecast services in that sector would commence before the end of the year.
He said: “Even at the moment we provide marine forecast services at the elementary level but because of the capital-intensive nature of the sector, the utilization of this budgetary provision by the government will help us provide advanced marine tailored made forecast before the end of this year and we have gotten federal government approval under the Federal Ministry of Aviation to be able to upscale our forecast and on this.”
According to Matazu, the Nigerian shipping industry will not rely on getting forecast from outside the country as NiMet will now be the main provider of this forecast for the industry, excitingly adding: “NiMet will now become the main provider of the forecast for the shipping and the marine time industry and also for large scale fishing activities and of course for safety along the coastline activities.”
He stressed that the time for the commencement of the project will not take more than 6 months as NiMet has already started the implementation of the first phase of partnership with NIMASA and Nigeria Ports Authority through a pending MoU that will soon be signed.
He added that the GCRF African Swift project which started in 2017 is intended to help build capacity in areas of forecasting tropical weather systems and increasing the research capacities in West and East African tropical weather systems.
Matazu, added that at the end of the workshop, stakeholders and decision makers will be on the same page in the development of improved forecasting techniques which is part of the third TSB3 due in October.
In a remark, the WMO, Representative for North, Central and West Africa, covering 27 countries, Dr. Bernard Edward Gomez, emphasized the need for partnership on SWIFT related matters, adding that Nigeria as a member of WMO has signed the WMO Convention.
He explained one of the major contributions expected from Nigeria is the data generated from the weather stations that is the background for all work in meteorology.
According to him, they need to know the conditions now so that they can use the data generated in the future and therefore stations in Nigeria contribute to the global effort to monitor the weather and prediction at the same time Nigeria also benefits from data generated from other countries and of course there are also toll that are generated from other countries that WMO brings to Nigeria so that Nigeria can use to further develop their capabilities, he said.