By Dele Ogbodo
The Director General/CEO, National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA), Dr. Halidu Shaba, has advanced reasons why the agency got exemplary performance kudos from federal government.
The kudos came through the Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), an agency of the Federal Government on its just concluded assessment of government agencies.
Recall that the Director General, Bureau of Public Service Reforms, Mr. Ibrahim Arabi commended NASRDA for its outstanding performance in the assessment report and as he reiterated that this reflects the agency’s dedication to excellence and commitment to public service.
Arabi, gave the commendation during the official presentation of NASRDA’s assessment report at the Agency’s headquarters in Abuja.
Answering questions at the sideline of the just concluded Global Monitoring of Environment and Security (GMES) workshop in Abuja, on the kudos from the Bureau, the DG, said:
“I can tell you that one important thing that we did over these years is that we have been looking at areas (our mandate) where we were lacking so that we strengthen them.
“We also looked at what is needed and we reached out through shared vision to other organizations so that we work together, known that we don’t have all the resources we put our hands across to other people so that we would come together for the betterment of the country.”
According to him, since 2021, NASRDA has tasked itself on re-jiggling the scientific community, the research arena and changing the culture of research in the country so that Nigeria and Nigerians will benefit from it.
The DG, acknowledged that Nigeria’s science community cannot be running 8 hours research culture and then want to compete with economies that are running 24-hour research culture.
Shaba, said: “So, we are changing the research narrative, output and identifying key outputs that are essential to Nigeria and we are also becoming people-based.
“We are look at community and what they need so we have changed all this facets to be more responsive to the communities and it should be demand driven, that is what we have done differently.”
On the relevance of the agency’s Earth Observation service (EO) tools, is doing within the continent, he said GMES which is global monitoring of environment and security has factored the challenge of security being faced by Africa and West Africa countries especially, adding:
“Right now, EO is doing so much in the area of security but because it is not opened to the public, people are not aware.
“It is only with EO that you share data and also know what is happening in terms of natural disasters and you can also monitor the pattern so that you deploy the best method to stop what is happening.
So, this meeting (GMES) workshop will look at the areas of earth observation and security.
On what NASRDA is doing on flooding, natural disasters occasioned by climate change, he said in 2022, the agency was able to produce maps of areas that we were flooded across the country which was passed to the agencies and authorities that were in charge of flood.
He said: “Remember that sometime back federal government with the Chines through the agency tried to set up seismic stations in the country to identify where earthquakes are likely to happen.
“And then people cannot even link earthquake with flood because when you have these issues you have new drainage are created which are also threat to flooding and so we have been in the area and the agency has so much in terms of flood management and what we are trying to do now is to bring other African countries because they may not have the capacity and they don’t also the facility to deal with this.
“Nigeria has for over 15 years been serving as the regional support service for U.S spider and it is this body that activates charts anytime there is flood. He however noted that it is imperative that federal government agencies synergise by engage actors that are managing these disasters.
