Kasim Sumaina in Abuja
Buoyed by the need to establish more meteorological stations in the country in line with World Meteorological Organisation’s standard, the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) has commissioned the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) weather stations, even as the agency, during the commissioning, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with ABU.
The Director General, NiMet, Prof. Abubakar Mashi, while commissioning the station, noted that the partnership between NiMet and ABU, Zaria will greatly enhance the capacity of the agency to give valuable and accurate weather information.
The Agency, in a statement on Monday by its General Manager, Public Relations Unit, Muntari Ibrahim, said: “As a university, we believe you have a mandate to produce quality manpower in different aspects of life in order to promote sustainable development particularly in the country.”
According to him, “Weather is one critical element that affects everyone. We believe that your mandate and our mandate have a point of convergence, in that whatever manpower, in which field you produce, whether in medicine, agriculture, environmental management requires weather information because weather affects everything.
“ABU is a world class university that in our reasoning, deserves a world class meteorological station. So as part of the needs assessment we conducted on Nigerian universities, we were convinced that there is need to intervene and assist the federal universities.”
He said: “By assisting the universities, NiMet is in turn expanding its network of stations. Going by the World Meteorological Organisation standard, NiMet needs over 9,000 meteorological stations to cater for the weather needs of the country but currently NiMet has below a thousand.
“In fulfilling its mandate as well as meeting with WMO requirement, therefore NiMet has decided to partner with universities to meet their infrastructural deficit and in doing this NiMet is meeting its own target.”
While welcoming the DG/CEO NiMet, the ABU Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ibrahim Garba, promised not only to integrate the study of meteorology in the programmes of the university but also vowed that the university will provide the necessary support and security for the weather station installed in the university.
