Prof. Turner Isoun has my full respects, Your Excellency. I told former President Goodluck Jonathan that much in his heydays as Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces, Federal Republic of Nigeria. I told him that much on Sunday, 11 July 2010.
I was hoping that the President would not hesitate to decorate the professor with a national honour during the centennial celebrations in 2014. Of course, I fully realise that no one man should take credit for the great leap into the future such as Isoun advocated, but the story of Nigeria’s advances in space technology would not be complete without the initiative brought by the professor to bear on the project.
It is common knowledge that it was under his tenure as Minister of Science and Technology that the government pursued to fruition the idea of having our own satellite in orbit. Happily, under Jonathan’s tenure as President, Nigeria could boast of three satellites in space. It is a modest achievement when you put it alongside what the Americans and the Russians have done, but it is well worth it.
As much as we get anxious about coping with the demands of our daily bread and butter, it is important to nurture higher aspirations in a world where our fellow human beings are plotting to migrate outside the earth, and are actively exploring the possibility of life in neighbouring planets. See what Elon Musk is doing, for instance.
Your Excellency, I fully realise that you spent a much longer time in a science classroom than I did. But the internet has since brought knowledge to a common pool from which the neophyte can draw, no matter how complicated the research interest. Naturally, therefore, I can venture to discuss the big bang theory and the proposition that the universe is expanding and the atmosphere is increasingly becoming rarefied.
None of this would make much sense to the common man in our towns and villages, in Fantuo and in Sampou, concerned as they are about their survival from day to day. But this concern may be presumed to have propelled the governments of so-called first world countries to seek the imperative of placing satellites in outer space, ostensibly to observe the progress of the universe, if only to be sure of the stability of the earth in the overall scheme of life.
I can only fall back on personal experience to explain what I mean. When I arrived London for the first time, for instance, the car which drove me through the streets to my destination at Marriott Hotel, Kilburn High Road, did its best to intimidate me with its posh interior, its broad panels, its novel gimmicks. But more than anything, Your Excellency, I was completely taken by the voice of a female conductor who directed our route, trailing a map that remained active on the dashboard.
I was truly impressed that this faceless voice could tell our way out of Heathrow Airport, through the busy morning traffic, right up to our final stop, with an unfailing accuracy about the exact number of meters ahead before we turned left or right, as the case may be. I have since come to know this as a useful gadget in traffic by which any stranger could find their way around town. It is a satellite navigation instrument, Satnav for short, that directs the traveler through traffic. It is taken for granted in countries that have been painstakingly charted and mapped out on the satellite grid.
Your Excellency, you and I know that the territory we come from remains uncharted. At best, our routes are navigated by bus conductors and taxi drivers who know the map of the city like the back of their hands. The conductors in Lagos and Port Harcourt, for instance, announced the various bus stops at the top of their voices, sticking their heads out of the racing vehicles and waving their hands at the waiting crowd of passengers. But that is not as it should be.
A first time visitor to Abuja, or anyone who is not too familiar with the outlay of this growing federal capital territory, should be able to acquire that gadget, type in his destination, and be guided by that all-knowing voice through traffic. That can only be possible if indeed our capital is fully mapped out and downloaded into that handy electronic device that is as common as a cell phone.
Scientific advancements such as this, no doubt, have become possible by virtue of satellite technology. I suppose that everything from climate change monitoring to television pictures, broadband internet, solar energy sourcing and vehicle tracking systems are linked to satellite technology. Clearly, satellite images are also useful in planning future cities, if the famous Yenagoa Master Plan is anything to go by.
The experts say there are obvious advantages to all this, Your Excellency. The assurance from the distinguished professor to the effect that building a satellite in space would turn around the fortunes of Nigeria, improve the monitoring of boundaries and pipelines, enhance ground water investigation and ensure environmental observation, amongst other things, gave cause for hope. It meant that we were well-nigh equipped to warn our citizens of imminent natural disasters long before they occur. This is what Niger Sat 1, our inaugural satellite, was meant to accomplish.
It is a mark of the seriousness with which the civilised world sees the importance of satellite technology that there are a total of one thousand satellites in space. Of this lot, Nigeria had but one, until July 2010 when the second and third were launched under the auspices of Turner Isoun. It matters little that they were not launched at Satellite Town in Lagos. They were launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia, bearing the Nigerian brand.
As Carl Sagan would put it, man’s first landing on the moon is as important as the first man climbing a tree. For all it is worth, the willingness of the Nigerian government to invest in space technology indicates a readiness to partake of the bounties of a future where human progress will not be complete without a visible presence in space. We mourn the loss of Turner Timinipre Isoun. We mourn the loss of a pioneer in a class of his own, the only one in that class.
