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COPUOS/T.551 

Page 11

 

 

I now recognize Nigeria and I give the floor to 

Mr. Maiyegun. 

 

 

Mr. O. I. MAIYEGUN (Nigeria) 

(interpretation from French):  Thank you very much 

Mr. Chairman. 

 

 

(Continued in English) On behalf of the 

Nigerian delegation, I am pleased t see you preside 

over the activities and the affairs of the forty-ninth 

session of this Committee.  We are well aware of your 

vast experience and record as head of the French Space 

Agency and we have no doubt in your ability to 

conduct the affairs of this session.  We pledge our 

support for you and the members of the new Bureau 

and we assure you of our cooperation throughout this 

session and indeed the subsequent sessions Mr. 

Chairman. 

 

 

We also note with satisfaction the tremendous 

progress made by the Committee under the able 

chairmanship of Dr. Adigun Ade Abiodun of our 

country.  We note in particular that the Committee had 

been able to follow the progress of the implementation 

of UNISPACE III recommendations with two 

remarkable achievements.  One is the submission of 

the reports of UNISPACE III + 5 review to the General 

Assembly with the sensitization of the international 

community through a press conference organized by 

the Committee’s executives and a debate at the fifty-

ninth session of the General Assembly on the 

invaluable contribution of space technology to human 

development.  Two, the creation of the Disaster 

Management International Space Coordination, which 

we often refer to as DMISCO, entity as a programme 

under the Office for Outer Space Affairs, and a joint 

effort to implement an integrated global system, 

especially through international cooperation, to help 

developing countries have access to and be in a 

position use space-based technology for risk reduction 

and disaster management. 

 

 

Mr. Chairman, we also would like to 

commend, not just for the timely availability of 

documents, but the good work and the efforts of the 

staff of the Office for Outer Space Affairs, in particular 

the Director, Mr. Sergio Camacho-Lara, and the Expert 

on Space Applications, Ms. Alice Lee, for their 

dedication to duty to ensure the implementation of the 

programmes of the Committee and its subsidiary 

bodies. 

 

 

Mr. Chairman, before I proceed to make other 

comments, let me, through you, also express the 

condolences of our delegation, of our country, to the 

people of Indonesia, on the unfortunate disaster in the 

Java region.  We stand by the ________(?) Indonesia.  

We commiserate with them and we join them in 

solidarity at this time. 

 

 

Mr. Chairman, at the forty-eighth session of 

the Committee in June 2005, Nigeria gave an update on 

the implementation of its space policy and programme 

which include the validation of NigeriaSat-1 images 

and the use of the images in many areas of socio-

economic development by the user community in 

Nigeria.  The Committee may wish to note that the 

awareness generated through these initiatives has 

continued to yield positive results.  The National Space 

Research and Development Agency is collaborating 

and sharing experiences with the University of 

Missouri, in Kansas City, in the United States, and the 

International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, in 

Ibadan, Nigeria, on two projects titled “Satellite-Based 

Resource and Environmental Management in the Niger 

Delta Area of Nigeria”, and “Development of Models 

for Cassava Yield Prediction”, respectively, using 

NigeriaSat-1 and other satellite data.  Our Agency is 

also collaborating with Obafemi Awolowo University, 

in Ile-Ife in Nigeria, and the International Institute for 

Geo-Information and Earth Observation in The 

Netherlands, on capacity-building in the development 

GEOFORMIN, a geo-information-based system for 

forestry management in Nigeria and, indeed, in Africa.  

The programme is an extension of the project titled 

“Deforestation and its Implication on Biodiversity in 

Nigeria”. 

 

 

Similarly, Mr. Chairman, the Agency is 

promoting satellite-based research in many tertiary 

institutions in Nigeria, taking advantage of the 

availability of images from NigeriaSat-1 at free or 

nominal cost.  Thus, the reality of unhindered access to 

real-time and affordable satellite data from NigeriaSat-

1 is gaining ground and impacting on sustainable 

development efforts in Nigeria. 

 

 

On 15 November 2005, the Disaster 

Monitoring Constellation, DMC, a novel partnership 

among five countries, Algeria, China, Nigeria, Turkey 

and the United Kingdom, signed an Agreement to join 

the International Charter on Space and Major Disaster.  

Nigeria, through the DMC, is now being empowered to 

trigger the Charter in the event of any disaster in 

Nigeria and the West Africa Sub-Region.  NigeriaSat-1 

and the other satellites in the DMC have been 

providing effective services to users globally.  These 

include the management of the earthquake disasters in 

Iran and Kashmir region and the flood disaster 

triggered by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in the 

United States. 

 

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