The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Vol. XXXVII. Part B4. Beijing 2008 
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level of the organization as well as to the regional/state 
governing body. There will be complexity in abstraction and 
splitting of information for the purpose of the federal level and 
at the same time for the state level of the government. 
Therefore in order to have a successful adoption of GIS or 
implementation of NSDI in Nigeria federal state system, 
consideration should be made on the structure of the governance 
system as well as the structure of the organizations participating 
in SDI so also the issue of information scaling. Variation in 
structures may lead to imbalance in services to be provided due 
to data and system interoperability amongst other problems. 
6.2 GI Policy versus Decentralization Policy 
Most decentralization policies of developing countries are either 
very old or based on old concepts of governance. They are 
detailed in terms of political rights and responsibilities, 
governance and power devolution, financial and resources 
stratification. But most of them did not include organization 
management, service provision and most especially data 
management both spatial and non spatial. Such is the case of the 
1976 Local Government Policy in Nigeria. This is a setback in 
the policy as issues surrounding collection, usage and 
ownership of data are not spelt out in detail. Most organizations 
established under the policy are either silent on such issues or 
use the political standards. For instance planning services are 
rendered at the local level of planning organization according to 
the URP law of 1992 which was based on the local government 
policy of the country. But ownership and management of 
planning data varies within the country’s State governments. 
While Lagos State is claiming the ownership of all planning 
data within its jurisdiction, other states such as Oyo, Kwara and 
Osun are still in different to ownership and management of 
planning data. Others include EIA Decree 86 and SURCON 
Decree 44. 
On the other hand, GI policy in Nigeria which is referred to as 
National GI policy is not based on the decentralization policy of 
the country. Of all issues addressed in the GI policy, the 
decentralization issues and polycentricism of organizations and 
governance are not addressed. It seems as if the policy 
abstracted from the reality of three tiers of governance and 
assumed a national approach of inter-organizational operations 
at the national level. This is a setback for SD development as 
most public GI organizations cut across the three tiers of 
government. The above mentioned decrees are stated in the 
draft as affiliate with the GI policy. There is an unforeseen 
challenge in implementing the GI policy if it does not address 
the issue of data in related to unitary system in Nigeria. 
One major identified challenge of NSDI in Nigeria is the delay 
in ratification of GI policy (Igbokwe and Ono, 2005; Kufoniyi, 
2004; Nwilo and Osanwuta, 2004). But the problem extends far 
beyond the issue of ratification. It is better to correct and amend 
this draft while it is still not ratify, than to wait until it is ratify 
and face the consequences of the short comings. However, 
technology and concepts of GIS is fast evolving, so the policy 
draft of 2003 is definitely obsolete for the techniques and 
applications of 2008. 
6.3 Polycentricism (Autonomy versus Common 
Interest) 
Closely related to the above challenges is the issue of autonomy 
within the Federal states in Nigeria. State government within the 
country is autonomous in resource management and 
development processes. They define policies relating to service 
deliveries within their boundaries amongst other regulations. 
This has brought about polycentricism of the middle tier of the 
governance in Nigeria. There have been movements of 
complete resource control and policy re-definition in advantage 
of state governments. The most recent movement in the country 
is the local government trying to claim autonomy from the state 
and federal government. 
While this may seems as a good sign of empowerment of lower 
tiers of government within a federal state system, it also comes 
with challenges of individual interest overriding the common 
interest of the country. Establishing SDI in such polycentric 
system will come at a cost of interoperability. Each State 
government may involve various standards and different tools 
that may not interoperate with one another. The situation may 
become complex if local governments establish different 
standards for SDL 
Lagos State is having its GIS infrastructure and Land 
information system, Abuja FCT is establishing its GIS, Enugu 
State is starting its GIS project soon and Oyo State is presently 
digitizing spatial data. These projects and lots of others are done 
independently with different standards and applications. One 
vital question should be about the platform on which the 
National SDI will be built. Is it going to assume its own 
standard and applications using its own National data or build 
on the state divided SDIs. The challenges range from purely 
technical problem of data interoperability to basic social 
problem of trust and transparency among the State of the 
country. 
6.4 SDI Project scale and Resources Availability 
{Imbalance Resources) 
Local Governments in Nigeria are mostly supported by state 
governments so they have limited resources to be autonomous, 
but some of them still propose autonomy of local level. 
Moreover, there is great imbalance within State governments 
that are supporting these local governments. While some are 
very rich in resources and revenue, others are highly dependent 
on allocations from the federal government. Implementing SDI 
in each level of governance requires lots of resources and 
capacity which may be too much for federal government to 
solely sponsor. How these projects can be founded is a strong 
challenge against a successful implementation of SDI in the 
county. 
Some local governments have resources to conveniently 
establish SDI and some cannot even maintain the existing 
manual data handling system. The same imbalance applies to 
the State governments and also political regions. While some 
can afford the most expensive and most recent technology, 
some have to rely on cheap and open source tools and 
application if they were to implement SDL 
6.5 Public Private Partnership Deficiencies 
Nigeria as an example of developing country still has weak 
public and private partnership. This can be attributed to many 
factors of socio-economy within the country. They include 
Long age of disparity between public and private capital, 
resources and capacity, and also due to difference in targeted 
values of the two parties. While public offices are targeted at 
public service delivery (pure public good system), privates are 
going for profit oriented service provision.