The discourse on the use of Geospatial Information as necessary ingredient to enhance good decision for effective planning and development of every sector of the economy in order to improve human lives has since taken the centre stage. The Geographic Information System (GIS) Day Celebration that formed part of the Annual General Meeting (AGM) events of the Geoinformation Society of Nigeria (GEOSON) supported by the Office of the Surveyor General of the Federation (OSGoF) held recently at Reiz Continental Hotel, Abuja offered another window of such discourses.
The theme for this particular event, “Driving IGR with Geospatial Technology” was apt according to the Surveyor General of the Federation (SGoF), Surv. Samuel Adeniran Taiwo, who helped in powering the celebration. In his speech, he emphasized the significance of Internally Generated Revenue especially with the dwindling of financial resource in our contemporary world could not be overemphasized. He added that every country was financially overburdened and struggling to wriggle out of the uncertainties of the future.
Surv. Taiwo pointed out that the human society could only manage or effectively control their present and future when they could predict phenomena or happenings around their environments with the help of substantial data. “You will agree with me that the human society can only thrive with knowledge”, he said.
Taiwo added: “Now that the Government is focusing on the diversification of the economy to lessen dependence on the downstream sector, the use of Geospatial Technology to harness resources in mining, tourism, agriculture, transportation, land, housing, telecommunication among other engagements to increasingly generate huge finances for the Government is now”.
According to the SGoF, surveying and mapping, GIS and Remote-Sensing were not end in themselves, but remain indispensable tools to make meaningful progress in any human endeavours. He reiterated that every effort without Geospatial Technology would be effort in futility, expressing joy over Government’s commitment to the reality of the relevance of Geospatial Technology as being demonstrated by the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing.
He appealed to all those in fields of surveying and mapping industry, GIS and Remote-Sensing profession to come together to critically undertake the studies of the problems and challenges of our environment and provide the needed data that would help Government adequately deal with them.
In his remarks, the National President of GEOSON, Dr. Matthew Olumide Adepoju observed that their profession was among the top 10 fields projected to be at the centre of the emerging and evolving technological development. He challenged members of the society to acquire more skills to reposition themselves because of the rapid development taking place in the field of Geospatial Science and Engineering. “The dart of competent hands on Data Science, GeoComputation and Application Programming Interface (API) Development is starring us on the face. This must be addressed immediately to ensure we take our rightful place in Nigeria”, he said.
He also observed that Geoinformation took the centre state of American election with real-life spatial analysis of the election results and projections. He urged members to begin to work towards developing products that would impact the 2023 elections in Nigeria. He then commended the SGoF for his magnanimity in hosting the GIS Day celebration.