Professor Mansur Matazu is the Director-General of Nigerian Meteorological Agency (Nimet). In this interview with SHOLA ADEKOLA, he speaks on the equipment upgrade at the agency after the crash of Sosoliso Aircraft of December 10, 2005 which killed many students of Loyola Jesuit College and many other issues. Excerpts:
HOW far have you gone with equipment upgrade, especially the Low Level Windshear (LLW), which aused an accident a few years ago?
Actually, the Low Level Wind Shear Alert System (LLWAS) project started after the Sosoliso Airlines crash of December 10, 2005 and it is a phenomenon that is very dicey and dynamic; something that happened within seconds and then it goes. Ab initio, we were not as an agency of government and also within the industry, able to track this, but after that accident, it became open to us; we came up with a proposal for this LLWAS and today we have done that in 18 airports.
Here comes the challenge, at times before you finish a project, you are already experiencing vandalism. In Port Harcourt, they cut the whole mast from the base. In Lagos, even within the airport perimeter, we recorded vandalism, but we were able to weather through the storm. One, we are working on alternative technology, though it is very expensive. It is called Terminal Doppler Radar. We are also devising what we call North-Central Approach, which helps us to study cloud physics over any area in the country.
With the cloud physics knowledge, you would know whether cloud could result into microburst and it is from the entire set of clouds that we could have windshear.
So we are using multiple approaches to the windshear, just as they are doing in the US.
They still have LLWAS, though they don’t experience vandalism, yet they combine it with the Terminal Doppler Radar and also the North-Central Approach. So, we engaged a UK partner from the University of Leeds to acquire the knowledge and skill and we have the platform now.
We have done the initial test-running of the process and we want to go into large scale to complement the LLWAS. So, it is one of our critical projects and every time, every period you see us running around, trying to get it.
On the issue of vandalism, we engage in community policing and we have seen significant improvement with regards to security and also the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) and other paramilitary authorities have been involved and they are helping us a lot in this regards.
Do the airlines comply with your weather advisory?
When they say pilot, Pilot-In-Command (PIC), even control tower, Air Traffic Controller (ATC) can’t dictate to them.
They give them information and they say at your discretion. So, part of that information is our Met information. Every 30 minutes and real time, there is a screen at the control tower where they give them update if there is any sudden change in weather. Even before take-off, we have pilot briefing room where you get our fodder and that is why we are beginning to publish those airlines that collect our fodders and we have an email platform.
The issue is compliance but pilots have the final say.
Nimet provides services to several sectors in the country and other countries, especially within the West Coast, how do you get paid for your services?
The Nigerian Meteorological Agency (Nimet) provides technical services. There is what we call the World Meteorological Or-ganisation (WMO) VCP (Voluntary Country Partnership), which is known in the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) as ‘No Country Left Behind! Weather is dynamic and it moves from one area to the other. Even, if you have the capability and you don’t share that expertise with your neighbours, I don’t think you are rendering any help.
For instance, if there is a problem of drought and flood in Niger Republic, Nigeria has over a thousand kilometres borders, all of them would move, that is number one. The reason America and other countries are called superpowers is because they provide some of these support.
I did one Postgraduate Diploma in Education, my dad happened to be an educationist and I was reading his books while growing up and I realised that school system started in Nigeria from missionary and then government started giving what they called, Grant-in-Aids and with those Grant-in-Aids, government now determined the curriculum, everything before eventually taking control.
So, for you to get relevance, credibility and become a big brother, you have to provide some support to the weaker community and with that we have achieved a lot as a country; we have been categorised as the best Met Service and they always refer to us if there is anything. So, anything you have to do, start small and people will appreciate and value you for it.
We have started the VCP with the WMO at no cost, but if I tell you, the VCP meeting that we attended, Nigeria was the only black nation among them as you have the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK), Spain, Netherlands and a few others.
There are eight in all. We want to show the world that we are not a beggar nation in all ramifications, even in the science of weather and services; we are not waiting for any country.
We just had a meeting with the French Government, we are going to do a programme with them and they were very happy with what they have seen. This provides credibility, trust and relevance and with that you would get recognised by the global community and they suggested Nigeria will help these coun tries under this United Nations financed Systematic Observation Financing Facility (SOFF).
The essence of this SOFF is based on the UN Secretary General’s statement that in the next five years, all citizens in the world must have access to early warning; you saw what happened in Libya recently where about 10,000 people were unaccounted for and more than 6,000 people confirmed dead in one incident.
It has been confirmed globally that if people get early warning on any imminent weather hazard, you are bound to reduce casualties by more than 70 per cent, but if they get the information one week ahead, the causalities will still increase.
Like the way we give our Seasonal Climate Prediction, almost six months in advance, that is a very good lead time. Based on this, the UN gathered people, financing facilities, development banks like the World Bank who have contributed money and it is through this money that they said, ‘okay, bigger nations should help weaker ones! That was how they identified Nigeria and we are assisting Niger, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso and also Somalia.
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