IBBUL Lecturer Calls for Establishment of National Remote Sensing to Ensure Accountability

By YM Bina

A professor of Remote Sensing from Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University Lapai (IBBUL), Professor Solomon Ndace Jiya has called for the establishment of a national remote sensing centre and mandate satellite monitoring for all major development projects to hold developers accountable in the country.

The Inaugural lecturer made the recommendation during the 30th Inaugural lecture of the university titled: ‘Eyes in the Sky: Recording Earth’s Secrets and Advancing Environmental Strewardship Through Remote Sensing’ held at the main campus in Lapai.

He urged policymakers, researchers, educators, and citizens to advance environmental strewardship through remote sensing in the country and beyond on the need to centralized institutions that coordinate satellite data, acquisition, processing, and distribution across government, universities, and the private sector.

Professor Solomon Jiya advocated for the integration of remote sensing in to agriculture and build contextualized university curriculum and create community- based geospatial literacy and prioritize open data access to enhance global data sharing initiatives.

The University don emphasized on strengthening international partnership and apply goespatial intelligence to conflict prevention as well as to commit to long-term monitoring with youth and gender inclusion to ensure environmental strewardship continuity in Nigeria for tracking land cover change, urban expansion, vegetation health, water availability, and climate trends.

In his remarks, the Vice Chancellor Professor Mohammed Hadi Suleiman said that topic is both timely and relevant especially at a time the world is confronted with climate change, deforestation, flooding, desertification, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation, and rapid urban expansion, the application of remote sensing technology has become indispensable.

He congratulated the Inaugural lecturer Professor Solomon Ndace Jiya for his outstanding scholar work described as a gentleman whose remarkable contributions to the field of remote sensing have enriched scholarship and expanded the frontier of environmental science.

Also speaking, the University Senate chairman of conferences and seminar, Professor Ebenezer Oluseun Ogungbe stated that the inaugural lecture’s consistency is a testament of the unwavering commitment of the Vice Chancellor to disseminate knowledge and upscaling intellectual growth and should be commended.