The Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan has spoken of his desire for the country to not only construct its own satellites but develop a launch capability.
Speaking at the inauguration of the country’s National Space Council, President Jonathan said:…
The Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan has spoken of his desire for the country to not only construct its own satellites but develop a launch capability.
Speaking at the inauguration of the country’s National Space Council, President Jonathan said: “We must evolve clear cut initiatives that will not only fast-track our industrialisation process, but one that will also see us, within the shortest possible period, able to launch our own satellite manufactured in Nigeria, from a launch site in Nigeria, on a launch vehicle made in Nigeria.”
President Jonathan said that the new space council would lead this project as well as develop policy guidelines for Nigeria’s activities in space.
He also pointed to the accomplishments of the country’s national space programme in 2011 when both NigeriaSat-X and NigComSat-1R were successfully launched. The former, an earth observation satellite, was the first spacecraft designed and built entirely in Nigeria with the help of SSTL. The latter was a Chinese-built replacement satellite for NigComSat-1 that failed in-orbit in 2008.
Jonathan tasked the National Space Council to repeat these achievements through its role in monitoring the implementation of the country’s national space programme.
The president added: “In reiterating our Administration’s unwavering commitment to the actualisation of the definitive goal of our space programme, I would like to charge the members of the Space Council to evolve ways of enabling the country to maximally benefit from our huge investments in the development of space technology.
“Given the critical place of space technology in the areas of national security, communications, industrialisation and sustained socio-economic development, the critical need to properly structure and drive our national space programme cannot be over-emphasised. This informs why our Administration has constituted this Council with high calibre membership.”
To back this statement up, Jonathan added that the council would receive the full support of the Federal Government ‘at all times’.
