The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA) has declared readiness to work with the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet).
The UN made the pledge through his team led by Trond Jensen, the Head of the UN Office for Nigeria, when the team on behalf of the UN paid a courtesy visit to the NiMet headquarters on Thursday 6th, April 2023.
During the visit,Trond emphasized his satisfaction with the analysis and the work that NiMet is doing.
The UN team leader attributed the reason for the visit to the determination of tye UN to continue its advocacy efforts to enhance the urgency, efficiency, and quality of humanitarian response in the north east states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe.
His words: “One of the things we want to do this year together with the government Institutions that we are working with is to be better prepared for the rainy season this year”.
He described last year as a national disaster in view of the massive impact of flooding and the subsequent damage to infrastructure.
While emphasising the desire of the UN team to work more closely with NiMet, Trond declared: “We want to work more closely with you in terms of understanding what might happen this year, compared to last year and how we can work better, working with you in terms of preparedness, in terms of anticipatory action where your input is actually critical for us to understand how the inclement weather would impact on the humanitarian work”.
In his response, the Director General, NiMet, Professor Mansur Bako Matazu observed that both organisations have a common goal and the convergence of providing early warning for all.
Matazu explained that NiMet has achieved certain level of leadership role in the continent based on the provision of climate services from co-generation to effective dissemination and getting feedbacks within the value chain.
The DG NIMET revealed how NiMet provides daily weather forecast to Liberia, and Sierra Leone as part of the World Meteorological Organisation VCP programme which has been on for almost seven years to date.
According to Matazu: “We are also implementing the WMO SOFF project, we are peer reviewing Liberia and Burkina Faso, Liberia we are doing that alone but with Burkina Faso we are peering with Spanish Met Service. We also want to apply for the second stage to peer review one or two other African states”.
By doing some of these projects, Matazu said NiMet has gained experience to be able to do some of its own national mandate while partnering with some Ministries , Departments and Agencies.
Matazu who said, NiMet is flexible and willing to work with the UN body, however assured, ” if we get details of your target location and elements of interest, we can come up with some products specifically for your usage and we can get it relayed to you electronically or we can create a segment in our App, NiMet weather App that can be downloaded from the playstore.”
The Trond led team later went on tour of some NiMet facilities.
