The Director General of the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA), Matthew Adepoju, has explained why Nigeria’s satellites cannot provide real-time surveillance data to support the country’s security operations.
Adepoju spoke during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Friday.
Responding to concerns about Nigeria’s ability to track recent mass abductions in the North, he said there was a misconception about the role and limits of Earth-observation satellites.
“Sometimes there’s a misconception about what the satellites should do and what they have the capacity to do.
“The one that the military has, and the one we launched in the agency, are imagers. They don’t record videos,” he said.
The NASRDA DG explained that Nigeria’s current satellites orbit the Earth and revisit the country only after several days.
“They travel around the globe. For example, NigeriaSat-1 and NigeriaSat-2 take an average of three days before they come back here,” he said.
“If you want global coverage, we need to launch many satellites into orbit. As one is going, another should be coming,” he added.
