High expectations as Nasarawa takes property census

A team of field officers are currently on ground, doing the counting of properties on ground in the entire state, to tally with what has already been captured by a first world order technology called Digital Aerial Mapping (DAM). They are armed with maps of all areas of Nasarawa, giving detailed information about contour or […]

A team of field officers are currently on ground, doing the counting of properties on ground in the entire state, to tally with what has already been captured by a first world order technology called Digital Aerial Mapping (DAM). They are armed with maps of all areas of Nasarawa, giving detailed information about contour or land cover type to aid town planning and development in site selection, urban renewal and general civil engineering.
“Their job is just to locate the property we have on the maps in the various areas, and then do a census of persons staying in those properties. They are to move from individual buildings to whole compound, and then streets.
“The exercise will lead to getting the entire population of the entire area captured on the maps before them,” said Esna Swart, a senior consultant and maps maker working on the project to provide the state with international best standards in lands management and administration.
The project is called Nasarawa Geographic Information Systems (NAGIS), a habitat initiative of the administration of Umaru Tanko Al-Makura, to computerize the state lands use.
Stakeholders in Nasarawa State and the government there have continued to challenge the 1.8 million population figures obtained the by National Population Commission (NPC), saying the commission failed to take into consideration, fundamental population growth indices in the state.
For several years, government has been insisting that the population of the state is over 3.1 million, representing more than one million people, over and above the official figure posted by the commission.
The stakeholders have named Nasarawa’s long boundary with Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and the continuous influx of people from the FCT into Karu, the gateway to Abuja as one of the indices of growth which the commission overlooked during the last census.
 The people have always relied on projections by the United Nations (UN), that by 2006, the same year the NPC conducted the census, the population of Nasarawa would have risen to 3.1 because the boundary towns have about 40 percent population rise, the highest population growth in the world.
 They say slashing Nasarawa’s population figure by almost half has affected the state’s subvention from the federal purse and always appeals to NPC to revert the figures with consideration to the indices.
The technology deployed by the state, to computerize lands management and administration will also come handy for the state to conduct its local survey and come up with the demography of the state to aid planning and execution of needed projects.
DAM is a component of the N2.7 billion (US$16,876,561) NAGIS, a 24-month project of urbanization, which is being handled by Aeroprecisa Limited. The totality of NAGIS is been handled by a consortium of firms under Siraj Consultancy Engineering.
NAGIS is a 21st Century urbanization project with an output expected to provide the roadmap that will lead the current administration to give Nasarawa the same planned development as its big neighbour, Abuja.
Siraj took up the job which is part of the administration’s overall land reforms, to provide the Digital Aerial Mapping of the state, GIS, as well as provide an effective cadastral districts planning in Karu, Keffi and Lafia – in what is expected to address the hitherto uncontrolled growth of slums in the state. The entire project aims to provide for physical planning and development control of the land use in the designated areas.
Aeroprecisa Limited, handling DAM for Nasarawa, is one of the first providers of geospatial products and services in the Middle East and Africa, according to its website.
The firm commenced test flights operations on May 31, 2012, over Keffi, and resumed flying of Lafia, Keffi, Nasarawa and Doma towns in December of the same year and has captured aerial images processed into the data base at NAGIS’ recently commissioned complex in Mararaba, near Abuja. Now, every detail of property on ground in the entirety of Nasarawa is photographed and processed into a computer data base, to provide the foundation for the three components of NAGIS: GIS, Digital Aerial Mapping, and Cadastral Districts Planning.

The firm has flown over Nasarawa’s 27,300 square kilometers size of land, to capture the land cover of the state, to produce maps for various uses. The firm resumed flying after the operation was severally suspended between 2012 and 2013 because of the ceiling of cloud that thickened around at various periods. Approvals to fly the state borders with FCT – considered a restricted area because of the No-Fly-Zone, also did not come easy from concerned authorities including the Presidency and the military High Command, until last December, the state government has said.
Sonny Agassi, state commissioner of Lands and Urban Development, supervisor of the project, told Daily Trust that the flight operations with light aircraft fitted with high powered cameras that captured detailed images of every property on the ground across the 27,300 kilometres of land in the state, was completed after full approvals were obtained from high authorities by the governor himself.  
The maps, according to NAGIS Project Manager, Alhaji Ibrahim Usman Jibril are available for various uses, as they are processed to give line details showing transportation and information about hydrography or waterways, as well as landmarks – natural and man-made alike.
The maps, according to the project manager, will come handy for government’s disaster management, planning for education, agriculture, commercial facilities and general development because decision making can be taken from an informed position with maps in the hands of authorities. The maps are also helping the project in the making of land titles because survey errors committed previously due to assumptions mapping, are now being corrected as the coordinates are now easier to locate.  
Esna Swart, the map maker, said the data base being created at NAGIS complex in Mararaba, will contain not just the orthophotos of the state, but will also provide the demography of the state. He said the project’s field officers are currently on the streets to locate the properties they have in the maps, for the purpose of doing a head count.