Office of Surveyor General of the Federation was created to implement provisions of the Survey Coordination Act 1962 and its subsequent amendments. It conducts trigonometrical, cadastral and topographical surveys. In this interview, Surveyor General of the Federation, Taiwo Samuel Adeniran, tells SANYA ADEJOKUN how the Office has contributed to economic development of the country and his aspiration in the coming years.
What does the Office of Surveyor General of the Federation do?
Essentially, our responsibility is to prepare molding for every bit and piece of surveys in Nigeria. That is, the map, the environment, for you to improve the environment, before you do any intervention, you need to know exactly what is where and where is what. We map the environment, do all kinds of thematic maps, provide administrative maps, provide road maps, provide hydrographic maps. We also do hydrographic survey, which is mapping of the sea beds. Of course, we do interstate boundary, we also do our international boundaries. With surveying and mapping being on concurrent legislative list, it is our responsibility to make sure that all our interstate boundaries are mapped, having been resolved by National Boundary Commission.
We are the technical partners of the National Boundary Commission to demarcate resolved boundaries between states. We also demarcate in collaboration with our neighboring countries, our national boundaries like we are currently doing with Nigeria/Cameroon according to the decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague. We’re implementing that judgment on Nigeria and Cameroon. We have commissions in the two countries to implement the judgment of the ICJ. These are our responsibilities. Of course, we also do customized maps. There is hardly anything that you want to do that you don’t need map for. There’s a slogan in our office, “if you cannot map it, you cannot manage it” because it is going to give you the scenario that this is the status of this environment now, both the topography and other behavior of the land, and once you see that, it is going to guide your developmental processes.
Do you map first and then the National Boundary Commission goes to do their own job or they do their own and then you come in?
Generally, in boundary demarcation or boundary delineation, there are six processes. Of course, the surveyor stays in all those six processes, but it is only in three that the surveyor is very needed. The first three parts are the adjudication, that is to say, allocation, treaty and agreement preparation, and delimitation. It is after that delimitation that you start demarcation. The design of the boundary had been agreed upon by the two parties so, by the time the surveyors come to put beacons there which is the actual demarcation, there will not be any rancor, there will be peace. After that we will do delineation, that is to say, the plotting of all those things on paper and then boundary maintenance.
What is important in boundary delineation is first the adjudication, the antecedents, the history that this land was owned by this, because if you have not really resolved that, you will not really be able to see the boundary. It is after you have finished doing that that the surveyor can move in. It is a joint thing. If it is a state matter, in most states, the deputy governor is head of the boundary agency and at the federal, the vice president, is the chairman of the National Boundary Commission. It is after they have finished the adjudication and the boundary is clear that the surveyor is invited. Essentially, when they are doing demarcation, it is the responsibility of the survey or put beacon on ground and then get data on them by coordinating them, doing survey on them and then you can now use the information you get to divinate and prepare the boundary point.
So why is the Office not popular considering its enormous importance?
I think it is the nature of the job we do. Which is surveying and mapping. Of course, even the literates don’t even know what a surveyor does at times, and that could be responsible for people not being much aware of the office of the Surveyor General of the Federation. But it is quite important. Our activities affect all sectors. We are aware of course that we need to do more advocacy. For instance, in starting any construction work, a lot of people will not think about surveying despite the fact that you need a survey plan, we call it TDP. For you to even be able to secure approval for your building. It is just the nature of the job.
If I tell you I want to map FCT or FCDA and you ask me how much it will cost to be able to do the mapping, and I tell you N3billion or thereabout you may feel scandalized but surveying is labor intensive but the lack of it will derail the best of any physical development arrangement without which you may not even be able to spend any money you are spending on any infrastructure effectively.
Take road construction for example; if you don’t get the geometric design of road correctly in which you are going to need alignment, the physical and horizontal alignment of the road, if you don’t get the survey input correctly, you may not be able to put up a good road that will serve the purpose, which you intended, or by the time the contractor moves to site, they may have to do another survey because it is this survey that will take you through the principal road termini that you need, and the surveyors are the first set of people on site, they blaze the trail. Even if it is an existing road, they are the people to first of all hit the ground running.
To know Nigeria right now, we rely on Google. If I want to go anywhere now, I just set my Google Maps. With your office, why should we have to rely on Google to map our country?
See all these things have to do with our level of development. I want to tell you government is trying. Let’s be frank with ourselves, surveying and mapping are not the only responsibility of government. And you know that in Nigeria, we try to maximize our resources and be able to touch some critical areas although it is not encouraging that we have not been able to map this country to the level of the developed countries. Nonetheless, this Google we are talking about relies on the map of Nigeria for navigational purposes.
I even thought you were going to ask that some vehicles lose their navigational functions once they get to Nigeria but we are working on that. But let me tell you, available resources have been a major constraint and we have been trying to let our decision makers know that geospatial information is very key to our developmental processes. It is a thing of joy that the current Minister is a surveyor’s delight. He understands the importance of surveying and mapping properly, and I want to assure you that by the time we are coming out in 2021, it is going to be a different ballgame for our operations.
Are you allowed to generate revenue?
We all know now that we cannot continue the way we have been doing business. People have complained about the wide disparity between capital and recurrent budgets or high cost of governance. If you are using about 70 percent of national budget on recurrent and you are actually using 30-something percent on our capital projects despite the infinitesimal number of people working in government compared with our total population, everybody knows that we cannot continue the way we are. So, all sectors have to know that we have to gear up our IGR efforts.
There’s this thing we call Continuously Operating Reference Station (CORS). These CORS stations are essentially pillars, but they are not passive. The pillars we used to know before are passive pillars. They just stay there without cement or concrete. But these CORS stations are active pillars whereby they support control extension, their infrastructure for mapping can be established all over Nigeria. We have done a ski map, that is, a kind of master plan for it and ordinarily we need about 250 of such points, but rather than putting it in the bush, the ones that we can put in the developed environment are about 165, and we have been talking to partners, and we even think the government should put in the seed money and once these things have been established all over the places, they will be maintained like the telecommunication towers, and what are they going to be doing? Anybody that wants to do mapping in Nigeria just only needs to go and purchase a prescribed receiver. Receivers are kind of equipment that you just carry about, anywhere you put it, it can hook up with these CORS like it is hooked with a satellite which is a kind of system like a Global Positioning System map which we call a kind of an extraterrestrial method which we put there.
So we are thinking about IGR. Also, we have a commercial and business department whereby we can even apply for jobs in some multinationals and in some other places that need survey or geospatial information or surveyor services. We’re thinking about that. Of course, we used to sell maps in those days, even printed maps in those days. We are still printing maps, but it has gone beyond that level. The maps we talk about now are smart maps, and they are customized maps. We have base maps like administrative maps, road maps, infrastructural maps. But maps are different because depending on the usage.
It would then seem that this office has lost a lot of money because of inertia?
There could be some truth in that although the assertion will not be entirely correct that there is inertia in this office. I kept on talking about the priority, that surveying and mapping are not the only responsibility of government. Inasmuch as the resources being given to us are good enough, we appreciate Mr. President for all his efforts, we appreciate all our decision makers but when you have to struggle to put money in various sectors but despite that, we are still impressing it on them.
We established our hydrography department less than five years ago and we are still coming up on that. Of course, we have people we want to partner with and we have been strengthening that department. When it comes to Maritime, the Nigerian Navy and the Nigerian Maritime Authority have been working there, but we have been trying to see how we can collaborate with them and work together with them, it’s going to be a kind of a gradual thing. You can have so many call stations around the harbor that people who are berthing in our harbor will be able to hook onto it and navigate without running aground because these are the issues, and again you can be able to tell them and do some sounding around the area where they are going to berth their ship so that they would not really hit an underground recording or whatever, we do a lot of that.
What are you doing about repositioning the office?
My responsibility is not to complain that the office was not properly ran. If it is very good on its own, I would not have any responsibility to come and become the Surveyor General here. My responsibility is to make things work better, and like I told you, I have three watchwords as my agenda: impact, relevance and advocacy, and to align all our activities with federal government’s priority agenda. I want the larger public to know what the responsibilities of a surveyor are and that is why since the inception of covid-19 lockdown, we have been mapping covid-19 data every day. I have also sent letters to all the Surveyors General of the states to do likewise like the Surveyor General’s office because that mapping will eventually assist us not to completely lock down a whole state, a local government or two local governments or three local governments, there could be some local governments without the pandemic, why lock them down?
You just need to identify areas where the pandemic is by this our mapping and then you can quarantine that particular area. Just being able to balance what you are doing in health sector and then in the economic sector, the map has been able to do that. And I must tell you and at this point The Presidential taskforce on covid-19, has acknowledged what we are doing and they have even requested us to send in our mappings to them twice a week which we have been trying to do.
Have you thought about mapping other disease like cholera, yellow fever, lassa fever like you are doing for covid-19?
Again, we come to the issue of paucity of funds. I will not deceive you, as latent and abstract as surveying and mapping is, it is not cheap. Of course, now that you have raised it, it is important that we should establish a unit on mapping and surveying at the Ministry of Health like we have units in some MDAs of federal government, but we prioritize our activities. We have been talking to the Ministry of Power and Ministry of Solid Minerals, I think they will need our services in Health too, but you know, we need to develop capacity to really spread, and we are just still coming up.
Yes, it is important. The moment you know the source of a particular ailment, it will not be difficult for you to know exactly what caused it, and you can quickly nip it in the bud or probably uproot it wherever it is rather than treating it. We have the capacity to do all these, but like I said, it is just the resources at our disposal that is the major constraint, and we have been talking and appealing to governments and I think by the grace of God, come 2021, our budget will improve and then we’ll be able to impact more sectors in the country.
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