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Preposterous Nigerian Space Development Program By Adewumi Rowland PhD Student, Newcastle University, UK
In May 1999, the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) was established to pursue the development and application of space science technology for the socio-economic benefits of Nigeria. NASRDA is been supervised by a ministerial council headed by the president and will composed of the Vice President, the National Security Adviser to the president, and the Ministers of Defense, Education, Science and Technology and Internal Affairs. When detail analyses are made into the activities NASDRA, then we will soon realize that NASDRA is babysitting us and especially the ministerial council.
In the budget of 2002, the National Space
Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) were allocated over
Technically, what Nigeria needs is flexibility of utilizing a satellite system that can acquire useful images, and the freedom to acquire images for almost all West African and Central African countries at any time. A system that can also supply all ministries of the country with satellite images needed for all mapping, environmental, mineral exploration projects. NIGERIASAT-1 covers the world, but of what use will an image over Kent in the UK be to Nigeria? And of what use is NIGERIASAT-1 if it was not useful in the search of the missing Boeing 747 Bellview airplane that crashes in October 2005?
NIGERIASAT-1 lacks the integrity as a system that cut across political, social, economic and technological benefits to help in national security, for example in border surveillance and intelligence patrol on land, air and sea. What is needed is a system that will aid the Navy to easily curb the restlessness in the present Niger Delta. A better Nigerian satellite system that will aid agriculture for land suitability, sustainable crop yield forecasting and agricultural assessment. Nigeria technological needs demand a satellite system of environmental and ecological benefits for managing oil spillage, natural and man-made disasters, and flood hazards. Most of the Nigerian maps being used by Ministries and other Government agencies were made from aerial photographs done in the early sixties and seriously need up- dating since the topography of the area has changed. High resolution satellite images are the most appropriate tools for any such updating exercise of the above.
The Satellite imageries from IKONOS and GeoEye, produces less than 1-meter panchromatic or multispectral imagery that accommodate a wide range of high resolution imagery applications. The IKONOS satellite is the world’s first commercial satellite to collect images with 1-meter resolution and with over 250 million square kilometers of imagery over every continent. This has made IKONOS imagery as been used for national security, military mapping, air and marine transportation even in the developed world like USA. This is better than any aerial photograph in terms of resolution. The multispectral feature of the imageries is a distinguishing characteristic that enables their use for a large variety of applications including usefulness in updating Nigeria's topographical maps.
In early 2007, GeoEye will offer exceptional spatial resolution images by acquiring 0.4-meter resolution imagery. The system will be able to collect 700,000 square kilometers of imagery in a single day, downlink imagery in real-time to international ground station customers. Hence, what Nigeria needs is a liaison with this world renowned service providers to build a Receiving Station in Nigeria to take advantage of this 0.4-meter extraordinary resolution imagery.
Adopting the Satellite imageries for mapping projects will ensure the standardization of the quality and image type, and this will facilitate the exchange of images and data between the various agencies of Government, using the proposed National Data Base.
In addition to wasting huge foreign exchange, NIGERIASAT-1 is not worthwhile to the country’s development. NIGERIASAT-1 is of low spatial and spectral resolution- with only ground resolution of 32m and only 3 spectral bands (Red, Green, and Near Infrared). With less than N6 million a full coverage of Nigeria of 15m resolution images with 7 spectral bands can be acquired and even generate a 3D images of the country! NIGERIASAT-1 is incomparable to LANDSAT7 that is almost free of charge, and satellite providers like ASTER, USGS and NASA has already filled this major gap in this segment. The quality of NIGERSAT-1 images is not the best for any kind of elementary planning. They are not yet calibrated, validated and radiometricaly corrected. This factor adds to the deterioration of the quality of images produced from NIGERSAT-1 (Koumaiha, et al) As at the time of writing this paper, NASDRA are spending millions of naira to secure 1m IKONOS imagery from private companies, just the way elementary spatial design and analysis, and planimetric correction that could be done in-house are outsourced to private companies.
National Population Commission (NPC) relies on the use of GIS mapping, and imagery-related technology to successfully carry out the 2006 census. Over N3.5 Billion was needed for these imagery-related technologies since NIGERIASAT-1 was inadequate in spatial resolution to provided needed resources. In addition, the Nigeria-Cameroon border dispute is still fresh in our minds. This is a mere boundary problems where adequate delineation of inter-state boundaries is imagery based. The 2005 budget allocate N800 million out of the N1.5 billion requested to spend on the acquisition of Satellite imagery all over the Nigeria-Cameroon project. What obvious role did NIGERIASAT-1 in the boundary delineation projects for the Nigeria-Cameroon border dispute?
It is no news that the 1:50,000 topographic maps of Nigeria are quite old and some of the data contained in these maps are obsolete and some incorrect. These maps of Nigeria date back to the 1960s and were mainly based on aerial photographs taken in 1963. Clearly, huge extent of development and urbanization has taken place. Developmental use of these maps will therefore yield inaccurate data. 1m and 2m resolution images are technically more useful for the updating of 1:10,000 maps. If NIGERIASAT-1 were of high-resolution satellite ortho-imagery, it would have been more economical and faster to implement any updating of the 1:50,000 topographic maps. Nigeria does not have any 1:25,000 topographic maps, yet NIGERIASAT-1 has no usefulness in achieving this task. In addition, Koumaiha, et al, reviewed the inadequacy of utilizing NIGERIASAT-1 imagery for updating 1:250,000 topographic of Nigeria. The NIGERIASAT-1 current images do not have optimal spatial resolution for working with data at the 1:250,000 scale.
Project work of many agencies, Government parastatal, and ministries, are marred by unnecessary duplication of purchase of the same satellite imagery. The advantages of high-resolution images for Nigeria can not be over emphasized as it would translate into major economic savings by eliminating unnecessary expenditures caused by duplication. With our developing strategic position in Africa, NIGERIASAT-1 would have been our opportunity to show case advancement. However, before NIGERSAT-2 is launched serious consideration and advance technical advice and decision making is required.
However, if the ill preconceived NIGERIASAT-2 satellite billed for launch in 2008 is still been prayed for, then decisive step most be adopted to secure high resolution images for Nigeria ass the need arises. Only two professional options are available. First, building a receiving station for high-resolution satellite imagery from IKONOS, OrbView or GeoEye; and secondly using advanced spatial technologies in aerial photography to achieve high-resolution imagery.
The adoption of a Regional Operations Center will enhance Nigeria capability to dynamically task the Orbimage or IKONOS satellites, ensuring greater responsiveness to military and intelligence situations in the country. Neither NIGERIASAT-1 nor the proposed NIGERIASAT-2 has the capability to dynamically task its system. Space Imaging of USA with its IKONOS satellite and Orbimage of USA with its Orbview3 satellite both with 1m resolution franchise the building and operation of receiving stations for their images with High-Resolution. Regional Operations Center will allow Nigeria to autonomously task the satellite passage without the knowledge of its partner. This Regional Operations Center operates 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, which will provides Nigeria the ability to request and access data as required to support local operational requirements.
Building a receiving station has many advantages compared with the ill fated NIGERIASAT-1. Similar receiving station are in Dubai (Space Imaging Middle East), Greece (Space Imaging Europe), Turkey (Space Imaging Eurasia), Japan (Space Imaging Japan), Korea (Space Imaging South East Asia), and Singapore. Adoption of this system will allow Nigeria the freedom to download images all over Nigeria and West Africa, at a lower price of acquisition. Revenues will be generated from the sale of these high resolution images to neighboring countries, which NIGERIASAT-1 can not comprehend. Individual agency, ministry, and commission are purchasing imagery according to its needs. This is resulting in many instances in the purchase of the same data by multiple agencies and the waste of funds.
The bureaucratic academic foundation called National Space Research and Development Agency should be scraped. The Nigerian Surveyor General Office if equally headed by a professor would achieve better result in the mere academic and theoretical discussions and propaganda been practiced by NASDRA. Alternatively, the agency could be saddled with the issues of flying permits, red-tape problems, and bureaucratic delays. The ministerial council headed by the president supervising NASDRA should immediately recommend purchase of planes that can fly at low altitudes for the agency to collect imagery. The resolution of imagery collected at these low altitudes will be extremely of high value and more useful than the NIGERIASAT-1 low resolution images.
The figurative organogram for the Nigerian Space Programme should be restructured. The Centre for Space Transport and Propulsion (Lagos), National Centre for Remote Sensing (Jos), Centre for Satellite Technology Development (Abuja), Centre for Space Science and Technology Education (IleIfe), Centre for Basic Space Science (Nsukka), and Centre for Geodesy and Geodynamics (Toro) are still technically and professionally competent, and should be designed to report directly to the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology. The Federal Ministry of Science and Technology should then reports and be answerable to the Technical Advisory Committee and the National Space Council under the presidency. However, it is the opinion of this paper that a new Imagery and Mapping Agency be created to be responsible for the acquisition and dissemination of images to all government bodies in Nigeria to ensure major cost savings and eliminate duplication of efforts and expenditures. The Imagery and Mapping Agency should be saddle with the responsibility for the management strategies of the proposed NIGERIASAT-2.
Adewumi Rowland PhD Student, Newcastle University, UK
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