By Nkechi Eze
The Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) has intensified efforts to strengthen its managerial and leadership capacity with the successful conduct of a two-day Executive Leadership Programme (ELP) on Strategic Management in the Public Sector, organised in collaboration with the Institute of Strategic Management of Nigeria (Chartered). The training brought together senior and mid-level managers of the Agency for an in-depth engagement on modern management principles designed to enhance operational effectiveness and professional competence.
Declaring the programme open, the Director-General and Chief Executive Officer of NiMet, Professor Charles Anosike, emphasised the centrality of strong management systems to national development. He stated that no country should remain poor when it possesses capable people and effective management structures, noting that the gathering was an opportunity for participants to learn, improve, and strengthen their capacity to address the adaptive challenges posed by climate change. According to him, continuous improvement requires getting better every day, and the key to operational success in an era of growing uncertainty lies in the ability of managers to adopt a multidimensional approach to performance.
Professor Anosike observed that management was originally created as a mechanism for reducing organisational chaos and ensuring that institutions function efficiently and effectively. He therefore urged participants to remain committed to establishing order and stability within the system as a pathway to operational excellence. He stressed the need for managers to challenge and respect their team members in order to build trust, strengthen teamwork, and drive collective success.
Over the course of the programme, participants were taken through a series of high-impact sessions covering core areas such as succession planning, stakeholder engagement, financial management, public entrepreneurship and innovation, strategic leadership, organisational culture, decision-making through strategy games and simulations, as well as ethics and team leadership. The sessions collectively focused on equipping managers with practical tools to enhance institutional effectiveness, strengthen partnerships across government and industry, promote transparent financial practices, encourage innovation, deepen ethical conduct, and reinforce a values-driven organisational culture.
NiMet described the initiative as part of its continuous commitment to professional development and operational excellence, noting that building a competent and forward-thinking workforce is essential to the Agency’s mandate of delivering accurate, timely, and reliable meteorological services. The Agency reaffirmed that strengthening managerial capacity remains central to improving national resilience, supporting socio-economic development, and sustaining the quality of services required for climate adaptation and long-term sustainability.
