Nigeria has postponed its plans to build and launch a satellite on home soil.
The National Space Research and Development Agency, NASRDA, said 2025 is no longer feasible due to financial constraints.
The then Director General, Dr Halilu Shaba, was speaking on 12 March, 2024, at the Science, Technology and Innovation Expo in Abuja.
He said the plan is ready and will continue when the financing to the agency improves.
All the satellites owned by Nigeria, seven in all, were built and launched abroad.
Not all the satellites are owned by NASRDA: one is owned by NigComsat Ltd, a private communications company, another by the armed forces, both built and launched in China
The others, also all built and launched abroad, are owned by NASRDA.
The best indigenous efforts were by NASRDA engineers building NigerisSat-X, a microsatellite, using the facilities in Surrey Satellites Technology Ltd, UK.
NigerisSat-X was co-lauched with NigeriaSat-2 in Russia on 17 August, 2011.
Nigeria’s first national satellite, NigeriaSat-1, an Earth observation micro-satellite owned by NASRDA, was launched 27 September, 2003.
NASRDA needs new satellites because all its satellites have gone past their design life and only one, NigeriaSat-2, an Earth observation micro-satellite, was for some time still useful in orbit.
The design life is five years.
Similarly, Nigeria is also postponing its plans to launch an astronaut to space, indefinitely.
A Memorandum of Understanding to use Axiom Space company to launch a Nigerian to sub-orbital space with Blue Origin is little more than space tourism.
The space agency has a rocketry department in Epe, Lagos State, southwest Nigeria, but very serious work is yet to commence there, experts say.
As of today, no African country has, or has ever had, space launch capability.
Dr Halilu Shaba was removed in the third year of his five-year tenure in 2024 by Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu. He was replaced by Dr Matthew Adepoju, a director in NASRDA.
A new date is yet to be proposed for this Nigeria’s tall national space goal.
