The federal government may be shopping for a new helmsman for the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMET) following a series of allegation against the present Director-General.
An investigation by The Daily Times revealed that Prof Sani Mashi has been asked by the minister to prepare his hand over notes since Monday last week as he was accused of fraud cases and awards of contracts without recourse to the extant rules. This, it was gathered led to an industrial crisis in the agency.
Sources close to Nimet informed that Mashi has been visiting the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission office on weekly basis in the past six months, a development that has remained worrisome to the minister
It was also learnt that a younger brother to a serving minister from the same state was among those that wrote a petition that eventually nailed him to the anti-crimes commission
Another source disclosed that Mashi was alleged of diversion of Covid-19 funds approved for Nimet, depletion of the internally generated revenue of the agency and award of a contract to the tune of N300m and above without due approval
The Nimet the boss was also alleged to have converted the MET city acquired by his predecessors into his personal property and named it Mashi estate
On his appointment as Nimet boss, he was made to study the outgoing Director-General to have real knowledge of the agency but failed to learn after months of training
It was learnt that the minister was angry over Mashi’s style of administration, a man he brought from the university to succeed Anuforom that earned worldwide commendation in the transformation of Nimet from nothing to a world-class Meteorological agency.
Also, because this happening at a time when countries across the continent were depending on the country’s weather forecast for their daily activities but went down as soon as Mashi took over It was also gathered that Sirika has pencilled down two candidates to fill the position of Mashi in an acting capacity, one Prof Mataju, a general manager, NiMET and another Professor from Katsina state.
