Nigeria’s satellites cannot track Chibok girls, insurgents –Muhammed, NASRDA boss

Director General, National Space Research Development Agency, Prof. Seidu Muhammed in this interview with EVEREST AMAEFULE,addresses talks about the activities of the agency and why its satellites can’t track Chibok girls It is now 11 years since Nigeria launched an earth observation satellite – the NigeriaSat-1. How do you assess the odyssey to the space? In the last 12 years, the space agency has given a good account of itself. From a humble beginning of only a national centre of remote sensing, with emphasis on capacity building; today, we have established other centres of excellence. One is a centre where we design and build satellites. Number two is a centre for geodesy and geodynamics which today prides itself as the most reliable centre supplying coastal information from the African continent. We have just finished the first four years of collaboration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and we have just renewed our collaboration for another four years which will be on till 2018. We also have a centre for space technology education and because of our prominence at the committee on peaceful uses of outer space, it now doubles as a centre for space technology education for English speaking Africa domiciled at the Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile Ife. I am happy to say that both long term and short term courses run at the centre having over 300 Africans.