By Linus Aleke, Abuja
As part of efforts to sustain the impact and diversity of Geographic Information System (GIS), the Surveyor General of the Federation, OSGF, Surveyor Abduganiyu Adeyemi Adebomehin has advised Nigerians to take a look at data in the country and see how it can be made more useful to the nation.
Adebomehin made this call, at the 2023 GIS Day Celebration held at the NAF Conference Centre in Abuja.
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He noted that data is very important in all strata of life, stressing that a lot of positive things will be happening to the country if it is properly captured.
He added that data assist every nation in tracking and monitoring developments across board saying it is key that data is obtained for management of all issues.
He said: ” I am just encouraging each and everyone of us to have a hand check with the data that we have to see how we can move Nigeria forward. We are advocating for NDDI. Geo-Spatial Data Infrastructure. It is an Infrastructure on its own. It is like the road Infrastructure that you have, the railway and every other thing you can think about. It is a National Data Geo-Spatial Infrastructure.
“But it runs on a platform where we bring all the data that are in silos together as a data for the nation. Everybody has right to add value to it. But there must be an administrator. Not that I will be in my office and I will analyse information then dump it”.
On why others cities aside from Lagos and Abuja are not found on the Geo data base, the Surveyor General of the Federation said, “Get the right pegs in the square pegs” .
He added, “Some people gather data and don’t know what to do with it. Rather than putting the data on the National pedestal, where it will be centrally managed. What we do most times is that we gather the data and keep it..The beauty of GIS is that it let us capture it once”.
Dr. Isa Ibrahim Jalo noted that AGIS has many successes in terms of how it has assisted in land administration in the FCT and other states have started emulating.
He noted that lots of achievements have been recorded with the deployment of Geo-Spatial Infrastructure, saying without it no society can survive it.
According to him, “Everybody knows AGIS was created in 2004. And it did help in terms of management of the land in Abuja. It has also helped in terms of restoration of Abuja master plan because all the data that were in AGIS were captured to the data base and it is being processed. It is currently being used in terms of planning and in decision making. It is because of this success that other states are now replicating similar thing. A clear example is the success of GIS land administration in Nigeria”.
The event had different speakers who espoused the need for all hands to be on deck for data collection and management for the good of the nation.
