…as Surveyor-General seeks deploy of already collated data to end banditry, others
The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, SAN, has called for the use of geospatial data by the military and other security agencies in the fight against insurgency in the country.
The Surveyor General of the Federation (SGoF), Mr. Abuduganiyu Adebomehin also tasked the military to fully deploy the already collated data by his office to track and monitor criminals from position of strength of its operatives.
The duo made this charge during the 2022 Survey Coordination Conference and Meeting of the Advisory Board on Survey Training tagged; ‘Geospatal Intelligence for National Security’ held at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State on Wednesday.
Fashola, who was represented by Head of Department, Nigerian Cadastral, Coker Robert, noted that the office of the Surveyor General of the Federation (SGoF) is assigned to provide data of geospatial intelligence.
He urged the defense and security agencies to hold regular meetings with SGoF to tackle insurgency.
According to him, “With the help of Geospatial intelligence the movements and activities of the armed criminals can easily be tracked or monitored thus providing the military and all other security agencies the advantage of taking decisions and prosecuting war against criminal elements from positions of strength.“
Similarly, Adebomehin said, “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.
“As surveyor, I will plead and enjoin each and everyone of us to follow the Survey Coordination Act Data. 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.
“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,” he added.
VANGUARD
