BY TIMOTHY AGBOR, OSOGBO
Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola and the Surveyor-General of the Federation, Adeyemi Adebomehin have identified full application and implementation of geospatial intelligence by security agencies, especially the military, as panacea to insecurity bedeviling Nigeria.
Specifically, Adebomehin disclosed that with the full application, implementation and management of geospatial intelligence which is about data, the nation would not be needing so much number of troops to fight insurgency.
Adebomehin made this known on Wednesday in his remarks at the 2022 Survey Coordination Conference and Meeting of the Advisory Board on Survey Training, organised by the Office of he Surveyor-General of the Federation at the African Regional Institute for Geospatial Information Science and Technology (AFIGIST, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State.
Speaking on the theme of the conference, “Geospatial Intelligence for National Security,” Adebomehin said if data could be deployed in its required quantity and manner, insurgency and other forms of insecurity would be a thing of the past in the country.
Already, he said OSGoF has been cooperating with the military and other security agencies through the provision of enough data for the fight against insecurity, saying that war against insurgency has gone beyond having high number of soldiers on battle fields.
“Geospatial intelligence is nothing other than data in its right quantity, data saved, data disseminated, the implementation of that data in all spheres of life is what we have gathered to discuss and how it can be of importance to the nation as a whole and we are very hopeful that insecurity will be tackled successfully. We have one or two that we have identified. We have deployed data and you can see the changes in the warfare away from the normal numerical strength of troops. You can see that bombs are being dropped and we have not heard any complains of dropping the bombs in wrong places.
“Data is always available but the data we are talking about, are they those data on paper? Are they those data that have been converted to digital equivalent? When you have data and you keep data your cover and you could not give the data to relevant authority, in that quest, for the insurgence in whatever form, then, the data is useless. Data is only useful if you can disseminate data and use it in its right manner.
“For example, the office of the Surveyor General of the Federation has a lot of data that can be of help to the relevant government agencies including the military and that’s why we have collaborated in one form or the other with relevant authorities in the quest for this insecurity here and there. So, the application and implementation of that data in its requisite information, in its requisite manner is the solution to anything we talked about. Let me say this, surveying is ubiquitous, surveying is everywhere and where we fail to use the data in its right quantity, then, we are still playing around insurgence in this country.
“We have held series of meetings, we have cooperated in so many ways and thanks to the President of the country, President Muhammadu Buhari, he has done a lot but it’s now for us to know when to apply data. One thing is to have data, one thing is to know when to apply the data. So, that’s where we are now. If you are going to the warfront and you are still thinking about the number of soldiers you are having and the number of the military personnel when you have to go and prosecute a war, it has gone beyond that, we now talk of chemical warfare, we now talk of digital warfare where you sit down in your house and you deploy drones, where you suit in your house and you know the terrain more than those who own the terrain in terms of trading mapping. So, that’s where we are now. We don’t talk about the number of Army you have in your arsenal but we talk about how digitally implied you are,” he noted.
Also speaking, the Minister of Works and Housing, Fashola, lamented that the country was being confronted with a security challenge occasioned by various armed criminals, adding that: “the situation is negatively affecting the advancement of every sector of the economy.”
“The world is increasingly becoming aware that the best way to go about resolving various environmental problems, countless of physical development and security challenges is through scientific approach and application of technologies that have continue to evolve,” the minister who was represented by a top official of the ministry, Robert Coker, added.
In his remarks, the Chairman of the event, Vice Chancellor of OAU, Prof Adebayo Bamire, said surveying and mapping is the bedrock of any meaningful development, adding that the ideas, inputs and experiences that professionals and researchers across tertiary institutions of learning in the country would share at the two day meeting would go a long way in chatting the course for a peaceful nation.
