Chief Oluwafemi Adegboye, a leader of the All-Progressives Congress (APC), charged that the Federal Government and the management of the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET) had violated the Federal Character Principles in hiring individuals for the organization.
In addition, he requested that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) launch an investigation into NIMET’s financial standing over the previous eight years, stating that the organization engaged in a number of fraudulent actions during that time.
Adegboye also urged President Bola Tinubu to impose a mandatory leave of absence on the whole executive management team as well as some top managers in an effort to ensure an inquiry into the numerous unethical activities that took place within the agency over the previous eight years.
It’s a petition
A petition addressed to President Bola Tinubu on August 29, 2023, with the subject line “Very Urgent: Petition on Inadequacies, Misappropriation, Travesty and Corruption in NIMET, a Parastatal Under the Ministry of Aviation and Aerospace Development by the Past and Present Management,” was obtained by Nairametrics. The petition demanded that the President put an end to all the irregularities that had been carried out in the agency in the past.
Sen. Hadi Sirika, the previous minister of aviation, was charged in the memo, which was also forwarded to Mr. Festus Keyamo, the minister of aviation and aerospace development, with exploiting the agency’s racial prejudices.
Adegboye said that Sirika and the management had been acting in blatant defiance of federal character principles.
He said, for instance, that all of the hiring done over the course of the eight years was biased and favored one particular area of the nation.
More information
Additionally, he claimed that all appointments to the executive and senior management levels of the agency were unfair. He emphasized that, of the 10 positions at the executive management level, for example, six were from Katsina State and the other four came from the other five geopolitical regions of the nation.
Aside from that, he charged that both the current management of Nimet and the previous administration had engaged in illegal hiring practices that resulted in an almost twofold increase in the agency’s pay bill.
Even though there were openings in their cadres, he further claimed that several southern agency employees were purposefully refused promotions in 2023.
Things to be aware about
He also emphasized how Sirika and the present management at NIMET abandoned the agency’s use of the due process for hiring employees and awarding contracts.
And he said:
The majority of the time, legal advertisements for jobs and contracts are not placed. All job and contract agreements made in the previous eight years have involved several questionable transactions.More than 80% of the executive and senior management of the organization pursued academic interests unrelated to the organization’s mission. They don’t have any good suggestions for giving NIMET good direction. Almost all of the money that NIMET makes is spent on things like replacing old fixtures and equipment and beautifying buildings.
Developing meteorological science, personnel welfare, and infrastructure costs are minimal or nonexistent.
Adegboye demanded that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) conduct a thorough investigation into the financial irregularities of the NIMET administration. He questioned how, for example, a car park at the agency’s Kano Station could have cost N250 million.
He also questioned why the agency’s multi-million dollar Doppler Radar system wasn’t working despite the enormous sums of money spent on maintaining it.
