Full text: Proceedings; XXI International Congress for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (Part B4-1)

The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Vol. XXXVII. Part B4. Beijing 2008 
36 
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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