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The issue of NSDI is even more particularized to public
organization rather than a joint effort of public a d private
organization. According to Agbaje and Akinyede (2005),
government agencies are the main sources of geo-information in
Nigeria and hence the major stakeholders in the development of
the infrastructure. Placing public organization as the major
stakeholders and private as minor in the NSDI project in Nigeria
may have adverse effect on its success.
Also the structure of the private organizations is absolutely
different from most public organizations which reflect
decentralized structure. Combining data and services from such
different structured organizations may be very difficult. Issues
like data scaling and level will be of great concern in fostering
public private partnership.
6.6 Political Interference
There is imbalance of priorities by difference government and
political administration. While one state government realized
the necessity of establishing SDI within the its state, the
bounding states may have some other projects in mind. Some
governors believe in solving immediate problems than making a
development plan that will last longer than their tenure in office.
Variance of priority affect issues like purpose of the SDI, some
may target Health service with GIS and the other thinks of LIS
for the purpose of land revenue and taxes. Also the effect is on
budget allocation for SDI implementation and availability of
alternative technology at cheaper cost to save money.
Personal interests, Political rivalry and Corruption of power are
main plague in African developing countries that are affecting
implementation of development projects. SDI is not exception
as most brilliantly packaged SDI projects are either not
implemented or result to failure due to poor funding and
sabotage.
7 CONCLUSION
There are several other prospects and challenges of SDI in
Nigeria but these few were mentioned to create insight into the
existing situation. Also complex governance structure based on
decentralization policy may hinder smooth NSDI
implementation but at the same time help in developing Local
and State SDIs. Therefore it is necessary to consider the
governance policies and impacts on GI organization as one of
the criteria to be used in establishing NSDI projects in
developing countries. However, the challenges mentiond in this
paper is integrated and also have many sub problems that may
hinder successful implementation of SDI in Nigeria
Building SDI assumes the alignment of government
organizations concerned with geo-information across all levels
of government. Aligning multiple agencies with different
workflows, diverse technology and system (mandates).
Integrating their workflow and business models will be daunting,
having difficulties and heading towards failure (Georgiadou,
2007). More difficult is it when such GI organizations cut
across all levels of governances in a federal state system.
Before any alignment can be done, there is need for detail
examination of the system to identify all factors surrounding
GIS implementation, going deep to the root of all policies
supporting GI activities and stakeholders.
In conclusion, the strength of SDI in Nigeria lies in its
challenges. If the country can confidently face those challenges
and find solutions to them, they can be turned into potential
factors that will facilitate successful implementation of SDI in
the country. Also this issue can be generalized to many other
federal state developing countries that are embarking on NSDI
implementation in order to find both the weaknesses and
potentials of SDI localization in their region. Developed
countries with similar governance system can be a guide in the
setup of SDI in the country but it should not be used as a blue
print to which the SDI is planned.
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