Surveyor General of the Federation, FOSSGON, Chart The Way Forward for Nigeria
The Surveyor General of the Federation (SGOF) Abduganiyu Adeyemi Adebomehin and Forum of States Surveyor General of Nigeria (FOSSGON) have both met to chart the way forward for Nigeria and also discussed the issues affecting Surveying in the country at the Office of the Surveyor General of the Federation headquarters, this weekend.
A statement issued by Henry David, Head, Information and Public Relations, OSGOF noted that in his opening remarks, Adebomehin said “We need to move States Surveyor General to Federal level so that they be can part of the decision making at the Federal level.”
Addressing the States Surveyor General known as FOSSGON, he said “On Geographic Information System (GIS) and land management, there is reason for us to come up with something to His Excellency President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The digital mapping we did in Abuja we covered several thousands of housing units, we have to tell government that there will be return on investment on money spent on digital mapping, We have to start writing the governors, so that the next time we are meeting we can start working on digital twin mapping, there will also be so many collaborations between the states and federal surveyors”.
He told FOSSGON “Look for some of your best staff and give them incentives, at the Federal level we have been training with the Chinese on soft wares and digital twin mapping, with the software, the system recognizes African building, we are now proud to say we can go to the second phase of Abuja digital twin mapping, our target now is to be able to use aircraft to map the whole of Nigeria. We need to develop our own capacity and this is what I want to plead with everyone”
Surv. Duniya Magaji , the head of Geodesy in OSGOF in his closing remarks thanks FOSSGON for coming to recognizing and collaborating with SGOF , he said “ We appreciate the backup you are giving to the Surveyor General of the Federation , we wish you all safe journey mercy back to your various destinations.”
Director at the Department of Surveying and Mapping, the Federal Capital Development Authority Surv. Charity Michael in her remarks said to SGOF “you have created structure and legacy that will last forever and that is a plus to the Surveyors of this nation. For that we are grateful.”
She said “we need to move survey offices to extra ministerial department, I want to solicit that, it should be extended to FCT as well, you have promised that you would do that, so I want to reiterate that offices should be upgraded to extra ministerial department, the issue of GIS, some people who read history are dealing with our survey data in FCT. We have insisted that if you are doing GIS , someone on the system must be a surveyor to deal with our data , what they are doing in most states is not holistic GIS par se , land administration system should be placed in the hands of surveyors. “
The leader of the delegation and the Chairman of FOSSGON, the Surveyor General of Adamawa State Surv. Pwavidon Simon in his opening address said “We came to seek more collaboration in the field of Survey , we are here to express our happiness and joy considering the fact that before us OSGOF has returned back to its rightful position since independent Nigeria “
He said “we are here to celebrate with you and to express our happiness, the confidence repose in you in land administration and management by the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu . OSGOF continues to play a policy formulation especially in the area of infrastructural development, we wish you well as you serve our nation with excellence and integrity.”
On his part the Surveyor General of Osun State Surv. Soladoye Abioye said “ we have two items , two of them have been addressed , to congratulate you on extension of your tenure and movement of your office to presidency , the third one is the issue of council , please we want to implore you to use your good office to bring the council back, this has been long overdue , there is no SURCON examination due to none existence of council , which will in turn have effect in our appropriation , secondly , there is need for synergy and collaboration between Federal Government agencies and the states like National Population Commission , INEC etc. They poise a lot of problems on boundary issues at times, we need your assistance on this area as well.”
Everyone at the meeting was agog when States Surveyor General of Nigeria jointly presented a gift to SGOF in recognition of his laudable achievement in moving OSGOF to presidency and elongation of his tenure.