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. The first and the most important of all criticisms is that Nigeria’s drive to own a satellite is just a political drum to showcase us as belonging to the club of nations that own satellites, and a boost to the artificial international image-making, like the recent re-branding project that Nigeria is trying to play and manage for herself. The recent money-enter–bush of whooping N40 billion satellite missing from the space is a proof of this. A friend once joked at the peak of the “search-and-rescue” debate that the missing satellite must have been stolen by some politician to mount in their village.

Technically, supposing we’re ripe to own and maintain a satellite, what Nigeria needs is the flexibility of utilizing a satellite system that can acquire useful and practical images for almost all West African and Central African countries at any time. We had need a system that can supply all ministries in the country with satellite images needed for mapping environmental, economic and engineering project, and more realistic, some useful for mineral exploration projects. This would have enhance and support other technology to map and aid mineral exploration. Critics have also argued that not only do we not need satellite now, but lack the professional capability to manage it, when we can not manage a mere land-based network of roads, we’re looking at owning satellite. For example, 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? With its low spatial and spectral resolution one still expected Boeing 747 Bellview airplane to be seen in matters of days but for the inexperience of the magazine and text book operator.

NIGERIASAT-1 lacks the integrity as a system that should 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 if the satellite had been of high resolution where cars and houses can be identified unaided. A satellite system that will justify the money spent and 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 by the colonial masters and seriously need up-dating since the topography of the area has changed. NIGERIASAT would have been very useful if it can provide high resolution satellite images, the most appropriate tools for any such updating exercise. I had wanted data for my PhD research, and was surprised that the NIGERIASAT-1 current images do not have optimal spatial resolution for working with data at the 1:250,000 scale. That is a pity, especially for country that is serious to provide infrastructures. It is like building a modern house without an architectural drawing plan.

The Satellite imageries from IKONOS and GeoEye, for example, produce 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 kilometres 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 to update Nigeria's topographical maps for example. What Nigeria would have done is to learn how to crawl first before walking; you don’t just go and buy a car because you have the money without learning how to drive first? We should have liaised with world renowned service providers to build a receiving station in Nigeria to take advantage of this 0.4-meter extraordinary resolution imagery instead of our low spatial and spectral resolution ground resolution of 32m! Such service provider’s system would have cost us just a fraction of the billions spent on owning a satellite, and with capability to collect 700,000 square kilometres of imagery in a single day. Surprisingly, this procedure have been adopted by even developed countries, 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 neighbouring countries, which NIGERIASAT-1 can not comprehend.

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. What is surprising is that the National Population Commission (NPC) relies on the use of GIS mapping, and imagery-related technology to successfully carry out the 2006 census while 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. What obvious role did NIGERIASAT-1 in the boundary delineation projects for the Nigeria-Cameroon border dispute? 

Only two professional options are available. First, building a receiving station for high-resolution satellite imagery from IKONOS, OrbView or GeoEye and integrate and redesign 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) which are all still technically and professionally competent. Secondly use advanced spatial technologies in aerial photography to achieve high-resolution imagery from the NIGERIASAT-2, in case it’s more than 5m spatial resolution and ensure it will not disappear "space". However, in my opinion 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. If we can do anything, then I will recommend we start using GoogleEarth, at least, it will not disappear from the web?

Robot  # 1 | 17.03.2009 23:37

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. In the budget of 2002, the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) were allocated over N2 Billion for the pre-launch of the first Nigerian Imagery satellite triggered by the termination of the contract with the British company to build a Nigerian satellite for the sum of N11Billion and an offer of N3 Billion from an American company to build a Receiving Operating Centre. While NASRDA might claim it tries to save money by rejecting the British and the American proposal, it is a typical scenario of “penny wise, dollar foolish”. The first and the most important of all criticisms is that Nigeria’s drive to own a satellite is just a political drum to showcase us as belonging to the club of nations that own satellites, and a...Read the full article.

konkomitant  # 2 | 18.03.2009 09:12

"The recent money-enter–bush of whooping $40 billion satellite missing from the space is a proof of this. A friend once joked at the peak of the “search-and-rescue” debate that the missing satellite must have been stolen by some politician to mount in their village." O'Boy, which missing $40 billion satellite. Is that a mistake or an exaggeration?

Adewumi A Rowland  # 3 | 18.03.2009 10:38

Thanks for the observation, it was mistake. Its N40 and not $40.