The Surveyor General of the Federation (SGoF), Surv. Abuduganiyu Adeyemi Adebomehin has advocated for Annual Surveying Day Celebration to boost awareness on the relevance of Surveying and Mapping and for Nigerians to imbibe the culture of using geospatial information in development plan and implementation.
Surv. Adebomehin who advocated this at the 17th National Conference of Women In Surveying (WIS) in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State called on the Nigerian Institution of Surveyors (NIS) and the Surveyors Council of Nigeria (SURCON) and other stakeholders to collaborate with the Office of the Surveyor General of the Federation (OSGoF) to initiate the National Surveying Day Celebration.
The SGoF said such celebration would stimulate the appropriate reactions from policymakers and political leaders towards promoting the activities of Surveying and Mapping disclosing that Surveying associations in developed countries usually celebrate Global Surveyor’s Day third week of March yearly for promotion of the roles of Surveyors.
According to Adebomehin, “Geoinformation prioritizes the integrative platform for digital data that with weather dimension in it and the United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management (UNGGIM) initiatives have recognized the significance of Geospatial Information in almost every area of government, commerce, academic and societal development and therefore have established that without Geospatial Information, the 17 goals of the SDG will not be realized”.
The scope of Surveying and Mapping according to him covered much more than transportation, aviation, agriculture, telecommunications, power and energy, disaster management, mining, water resources management, the downstream, health, tourism, the air space, construction and economic activities. He added that the role of the Surveyors has been defined for generations.
He commended WIS, a subset of NIS for the conference theme, “Geoinformation for the Challenges of the 21st Century: Road Map for Sustainable Nation-building” which he said was thought provoking in view of the challenges confronting our country.
The confronting us are surmountable according to the SGoF. He maintained that there was need for the support and commitment of all and sundry to deal with them.
He enjoined WIS to initiate activities that would encourage interest of the profession in the womenfolk pledging that OSGoF under his leadership would evolve a solid structure to support Nigerian female Surveyors and induced interest in order to bridge the gender gap. Statistics by SURCON he said revealed that only 39 of the 359 inductees into the profession last February were women.
Signed:
Abu, I. Michael
Head, Press and Public Relations, OSGoF
