The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Vol. XXXVII. Part B4. Beijing 2008 
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begin a project that will yield short term returns for economic 
and political reasons. Therefore SDI related project may be too 
abstract and capital intensive unlike provision of basic social 
needs and maintenance of facilities. 
However, local and state SDIs can be developed independently 
in federal state system. Each States can develop its SDI based 
on its resources and decides the purpose for which it can be 
developed. This allows a segmental approach to SDI 
development which will yield short term result and also serve as 
a base for a NSDI. 
While the policy is been set at the national level to provide 
standards and guide for implementation, the implementation can 
be done by State and Local governments at their own pace. Also 
the federal government may build a framework for 
implementation and also a national portal through which all 
States SDI can be accessed. This is one of the main advantages 
for a federal state country like Nigeria stands to gain with 
decentralization system. 
5.3 Availability of Resources: 
Nigeria is one of the highest oil producers in the world and also 
has many other natural resources to support its economy. The 
country will be able to support SDI project in the country 
financially. Also many states are generating revenues from their 
resources thereby giving chances for economic expansion 
within the country. Although the country may not be the richest 
in the world and also may still be a developing country, but 
there is great economic potentiality to support whatever project 
it will like to embark upon. What is needed is a proper 
implementation of a well defined SDI plan defined with 
appropriate available technology. Possession of natural 
resources is a good potential to attract funding from private 
source both locally and globally. 
Twisting the availability of resources around, it can be said that 
the awareness of managing several natural resources is also a 
prospect for establishing SDI in Nigeria. These natural 
resources are basic support for the economy of the country, so it 
is very important to manage these geographically dispersed 
resources. The need to manage these resources effectively and 
keeping record has been part of the reasons for GI organizations 
implementing GIS for support. 
Human resource is abundant in the country as the population 
rises to 150 million with latest census result. Many Nigerian are 
busy developing themselves both within and outside the country. 
The level of literacy is increasing and there are more graduates 
both male and female in the country (Aderinoye, 2002). This is 
an advantage for capacity building for the country generally. 
Moreover, the presence of two main GI institutes and several 
universities offering GIS training and degree courses is an 
advantage for the country to develop its human resources on 
GIS. 
6 CHALLENGES FOR FEDERAL STATE 
SYSTEM IN NIGERIA 
There are basic problems facing development of NSDI in 
Nigeria, they include lack of digital datasets, evolving 
technology, GI Policy issues and lack of man power. 
Furthermore one specific problems that is associated with the 
governance structure is the institutional arrangement which has 
not clearly define the roles of stakeholders (Igbokwe and Ono, 
2005). However, there is more to that problem than role 
definition, the arrangement in itself is not clearly defined and 
also other issues surrounding the organizations involved. 
There are many of such challenges that can be associated with a 
country with a federal state system of governance and few of 
them are identified and discussed below. These few were 
chosen from a critical perspective of governance structure and 
SDI implementation strategies. 
6.1 Structure versus Scaling 
One of the main socio-technical challenges is the issue of 
system structure and information abstraction across the level of 
government. Figure 1 shows information scaling and splitting 
across the hierarchy of governance and organization system in 
Nigeria. This structure is the simplest modeling describing the 
scenario of institutional framework of GI organization cutting 
across the levels of governance in the country. 
There seems to be clear delineation between the local levels but 
when it gets to the state, the complexity of information 
management and operation control becomes fuzzy and 
complicated. Implementing SDI in such environment need clear 
definition of responsibility and boundaries. 
Figure 1: Hierarcical Federal State Structure 
In such complicated environment, data collected locally are 
fused and integrated representing the reality as close as possible. 
But as the information is filtered up in the system it start getting 
trim down and also split into various sections. This issue of 
information scaling and splitting is important to service 
provision and decision making. There is dilemma of filtering 
quality of details needed in the process of scaling against 
transfer of too much details to the top where is not needed. Also 
this information flow pattern is contrary to the Hierarchical 
reasoning of splitting down structures in to smaller units 
approach to information infrastructure as given by Rajabifaard 
(2000). Moreover, information becomes duplicated as the 
middle tiers and top tier fights on ownership and usage of the 
information. At the extremes, redundancy of both data and 
process is created within on stream of service provision and 
decision making. 
There is also the issue of dual top level in multi-level 
organization, where most middle level organization has two or 
more top level to be responsible to. This is common in public 
organization in most developing countries’ federal system. 
There are possibilities of information flowing across the system 
in irregular manner(Rajabifard, 2000). Each section becoming 
independent of the other level, thereby communicating with all 
other levels irrationally. The reality of public organizations 
under more than one Ministry is more fuzzy and it’s more likely 
to have multiple top level, thereby creating splitting of 
information at the middle level (Figure 1). Dual top level can 
also be caused by autonomy of certain levels of government, as 
GI organization in each level are to be responsible to the top