At what was described as a ‘one-day workshop on the use cases for the exceptionally high-resolution drone images and street view data gathered for a portion of the Abuja Municipal Area Council,’ the Federation’s Surveyor-General, Abdulganiyu Adebomehin, on Thursday touched on the progress Nigeria is making with geospatial tech.
The Surveyor-General emphasized the country’s commitment to using technology to further its interests.
“When you talk about smart cities and you do not have what you want to showcase now, then there is no way you can talk about smart cities because you must have that information at a very large scale, two-centimeter imagery or less,” he said.
He underscored the country’s success with mapping, following the approval of 20 out of 35 blocks, as reported by Punch.
“For the past four days, we decided to pause because we still have about five blocks to go through. But having successfully covered about 20 out of the 35 we were given approval to do, we decided that we should start the process in earnest,” he said.
“In shaping the world now, it is the geospatial management and your information that you are able to manage that is shaping the world, and we do not want Nigeria to be left behind,” he added.
Speaking further at the workshop, Adebomehin spoke about the importance of the technology concerning modern warfare.
“We all know what you can do with the drone nowadays; those in the military will tell you when you say I have 17,000 in the army, the 17,000 in the army can perish in less than one second using a drone,” he said.
“When we say this is the first of its kind in Africa, a lot of people say this is not true, and I bet there’s no way you can get it in Africa.
So, if you fail to follow technology, if you fail to follow the trend, I don’t see how we will be part of the smart city we are talking about,” he added, reaffirming the necessity for Nigeria to maintain its technological lead for the construction of smart cities.
Alluding to South Korea, the Head of the Department of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Azeez Olaniyi, elaborated on the use of geospatial technology in urbanization and infrastructural development.
“We have an agency called Border Community Development, BCDE, which we have our office unit there. And I want to believe they are working in collaboration with Nigerian Immigration Services,” Olaniyi stated.
Although digital twins are typically thought of concerning cities, Olaniyi highlighted that they may also be used in border regions.
