The federal government has urged the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to leverage geospatial technology in their decision-making processes for development.

Nebeolisa Anako, the permanent secretary of the Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, delivered this directive during a sensitization workshop organized by the ministry for Enugu State workers.

The workshop, held on Thursday, May 23, in Enugu, focused on the use of geospatial data for development planning and decision-making.

Anako, represented by a senior official of the ministry, Olatunde Oniyanda, emphasized that geospatial data, which encompasses information related to space or spatial components like location, plays a crucial role in supporting government decisions for development.

According to him, with geospatial information, the government could visualize and make informed decisions on resource allocation, infrastructure development and other developmental matters.

While encouraging states to explore the application of geospatial technology when making important decisions for development, he noted that the government at the federal level had since recognized the role of geospatial data in effective planning and decision-making, hence, the need to cascade the knowledge to states, as part of the collaboration between national and sub-national government to promote national development.

“It has become imperative to carry along state governments in the institutionalization of the use of spatial evidence to support decision making.

“Institutionalization of capacities to analyze and visualize Geo-Spatial data to support the planning and service delivery of programmes and projects under the National Development Plan (NDP) 2021-2025, is a critical must-do.

“You may wish to note that the Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning has adopted the application of Geo-Spatial technology in the planning and performance management of Federal Government projects and programmes.

“It is also worth mentioning that the Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning is playing a critical role in the development of the National Geo-information Policy and National Geo-Spatial Data Infrastructure (NGDI) Bill in Nigeria with the aim to create synergy amongst stakeholders; prevent duplications and promote consolidation of resources that will be used in supporting sub-national governments to uptake the use of Geo-Spatial technology for planning and project delivery especially inequitable distribution of infrastructure for education and health services, population demography, gender and other vulnerabilities”.

The Enugu State commissioner for budget and planning, Robert Ozongwu, expressed gratitude to the federal government for the workshop, saying as the world evolves, geospatial data has become an integral part of development tools where a lot of data is needed in decision-making process.

“This is going to be quite useful to us so that we will be able to key into this development”, the commissioner said.

 

Julie Osagie Jacobs

Director, Information