The Director-General, Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), Dr Anthony Anuforom, said the agency is partnering with the UK Meteorological Office to provide complementary marine meteorological services.
Anuforom, who was speaking when the Senate Committee on aviation visited the agency as part of its oversight functions on Monday in Abuja, said the MoU would be signed in July.
He said that the essence of the partnership is to enhance the agency’s commercial capabilities in the country. Anuforom said that the agency had made significant progress in infrastructure development in the last three years.
According to him, in 2012, the agency had no Doppler Weather Radar, but that now it has installed two in Abuja and Port Harcourt. He said that installation work was ongoing in Yola and Maiduguri.
He also said that the agency had, in 2012, only one low level wind shear alert system at the Abuja Airport, but now had nine in different airports across the country.
“The agency had only six locations in the country with thunderstorm detector systems as of 2012; now the agency has in 20 different locations. Only five airports had Integrated Aviation Weather Observation and Displays System (AWODS).
“Now we have them in 14 airports like in Lagos, Port Harcourt, Calabar, Kano, Sokoto and others,” Anuforom said, adding that in compliance with the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), NiMet underwent a quality management system audit process in 2011 and was finally certified in 2013.
He said that the certification had so far boosted the confidence of airlines operators and other users of the agency’s meteorological data products.
Anuforom pleaded with the committee to ensure the review of the NiMet Act, stressing the need for review since the Act was last reviewed 11 years ago. Chairman of the committee, Sen. Hope Uzodinma, commended the agency for its good work, especially in the area of its commercialisation initiative.
“The equipment we saw and with the level of technical manpower, I can assure you that we are not lagging behind and we trust that NiMet will give us what we expect. I am happy to inform you that international airlines are also using NiMet’s data for other records, so it is something good for Nigeria,” Uzodinma said.
