The Director-General, National Space Research Development Agency (NASRDA), Prof. Seidu Mohammed says the country needs to take ownership of its space technology development to reduce capital flight.
Mohammed, who spoke with newsmen in Abuja, said the country had therefore through the agency been putting efforts to build the country’s indigenous satellite to reduce capital flight on the sector.
“Up till now, we have not gone beyond three per cent of our Gross Domestic Product for research in Nigeria and that is not good enough.
“The government is trying to improve science and technology development but more needs to be done in terms of providing funds to advance research in space technology.
“Most of the satellites covering Africa are owned by Europe and America. Deliberately, we need to do more to put our future in our hands, if not, it is another colonialism coming,” he said.
On indigenous satellite development, he said that funds were limiting the agency in actualising the project.
“By now, we are supposed to have launched more communication satellites and earth observation satellites, we have not done that yet because of lack of funds.”
The D-G added that it was important for the country to have more communication satellites due to its quick returns on investment, adding that it had the capacity to generate income for the country.
The NASRDA boss said that communication satellites could be applied in most sectors of the country for better service delivery.
“Investing in communication satellites is more useful because majority of the population are using it mostly through internet services.
“Through communication satellite, we can do tele-medicine to improve health services, tele-education to widen the scope of education in the West African sub-region and Africa as a whole.”
Mohammed, however, said that the agency was working to widen the scope of space technology through its ambassadorship programmes in secondary schools.
He said that they were engaging more partners in order to extend the programme to schools in the rural areas.
“We are working on diversifying space ambassadorship programme to schools in rural areas, but our constraints have been funds.
“We are happy that the private sector operators are coming out to support us to help widen the scope to include the rural areas so that they too can be inspired with the possibilities of space technology,” he said.
Our source reports that since the establishment of NASRDA in 2001, the agency has been able to launch five satellites built by different international space companies into outer space.