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NiMET concludes with NCC, MTN on MobileMet

By Chike onwuegbuchi
09 June 2017   |   4:03 am
Prof. Sani Mashi, Director-General, Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), said the agency has concluded all necessary details with the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) on its MobileMet as a frequency has been allocate to it.

MTN

Prof. Sani Mashi, Director-General, Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), said the agency has concluded all necessary details with the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) on its MobileMet as a frequency has been allocate to it.

Mashi at the opening of a workshop for State Metrological Inspectors (SMI) and Chief Metrological Technologists (CMT) also says NIMET is the first in Africa to get ISO 2015 certification. Mashi said NIMET is targeting 30million subscribers daily from its MobileMet at N1 per day.

“On MobileMet, we have approached NCC and the Commission has allocated a frequency to us and we have also discussed with MTN. We have reached necessary agreement with MTN.

The law setting NIMET has empowered us to render such services. If we get about 30million subscribers on a daily basis at N1.00, it means the agency we be making N30million daily.”

The NIMET DG said that the agency is currently faced with a number of challenges, ranging from capacity deficit to inadequacy of density of network stations.

He said that NiMet currently has only 54 weather stations across the country to service the huge population and land mass, which he said were inadequate.

He said it is unfortunate that the agency is running on an extremely low density stations going by the standard of World Metrological Organization (WMO) which says a Metrological agency should have a station at every 100 miles, meaning that the country’s agency should have 9,000 stations against the 54 stations it currently has.

According to him, “Nigeria is supposed to have not less than 9,000 weather stations but we currently have only 54 because of technical and capacity challenges.“

He talked about the agency’s partnership with both local and foreign agencies such as Katsina State, UKMet, University of Lead, UK, to mention but a few while NIMET renders weather service to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Gambia.

“What we want to do is to engage in a partnership in areas where we can discuss the possibilities of addressing what they are currently facing or they want to improve on.”

“Also, how we can help them to increase their capacity to provide this alert system that can help complement their services and also increase the market for their services,’’ he said.

On the ISO 2015, he said the agency was awarded the certification based on the satisfaction of the international agency after it had thoroughly undertaking the mandate of NIMET and was sure that the weather agency duties and responsibilities are in line with its mandate.

“We are the first agency in the whole of Africa to get the ISO 2015. It is an achievement that we need to celebrate.”

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