Gov El-Rufa’i Sends 28 Team Of Professionals To Al-Makura’s NAGIS Project

Rabiu Omaku

Governor Nasiru El-Rufa’i of Nasarawa state has sent a 28-man team of professionals in Lands management and administration from Kaduna State Government to understudy the computerized land system.

El-Rufa’i, who pioneered the execution of the Abuja Geographic Information System (AGIS), while he served as the minister of Federal Capital Territory (FCT), is interested in awarding a contract to execute the same project in Kaduna State.

A team of management and personnel from the proposed Kaduna Geographic Information System (KAGIS) Therefore visited NAGIS, being executed by Nasarawa State Government to understudy the project, and replicate it.

The commissioner for Land, Sonny Agassi, who received the Kaduna State delegation, hailed El-Rufai’s passion and commitment for lands reform, recalling that the Governor was severally sought for opinion when Al-Makura initiated NAGIS for execution.

He said when the NAGIS service centre in Mararaba, the gateway to Abuja, was presented for commissioning in May of 2013, El-Rufai was sought to honour the ceremony because he has emerged as the “architect of modern GIS execution in Nigeria.”

Agaasi eulogized the initiative by the Kaduna State governor as one to bring about completion, explaining that Nasarawa state is competing with AGIS, and emerged as the country’s trophy in computerized lands management, Kaduna will raise to the level of competition as the third state to have GIS.

“We are going to be competitive. We gave AGIS the run for their money; and now that the Kaduna State governor is initiating GIS in that state, we can only hope KAGIS will raise the level of competition by giving us the run for our money and fame,” Agassi, a Canadian who Al-Makura invited to supervise the project as Commissioner of Lands and Urban Development, said.

The commissioner was accompanied by the NAGIS implementation team, including Roland Klaus and Heiko Howey, a GIS consultant, as well as Mario Bajourk, a Information and Communications Technology (ICT) consultant with GIS Transport, one of the firms in the consortium led by Siraj Engineering Consultants.

The Kaduna team which was led by the Director General of KAGIS, Ibrahim Garba Hussaini, and the Project Manager, Mrs. Altine Jibrin, were taken through the relevant technology in the production of lands documents, including maps and titles, just as they were conducted round the NAGIS service centre to see the equipment deployed there.