Comments on: Nigerian postcodes – a case for open data

By: Joseph

Joseph — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 15:31:40 +0000

Job well done

By: Tekedia » The Error in Nigerian Postcode System – A Solution To Improve NIPOST Postcode System

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 05:01:52 +0000

[...] Akinbo had bloggedextensively on this subject like so many other people about the value chain in opening up this [...]

By: ireti Ajala

ireti Ajala — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 14:17:03 +0000

Hi Tim, did you notice the error in the postcodes published on NIPOST's website? (http://www.nigeriapostcodes.com/views/ ) e.g. I discovered that the postcode of Karonwi Street in Itire,within Surulere LGA is 100281. To my surprise, this postcode is shared by the popular Allen Avenue in Ikeja LGA!!

Could Surulere be that close to Ikeja to the point where they can actually share a common postcode? I created a map showing Karonwi street in Itire surulere and Allen Ave and measured the crow fly distance between the 2 streets using MapInfo Professional. The distance is 11.3km. Could a postcode parcel be that big and still remain relevant?

I am proposing a postcode using the following structure: (State + Postal Town + LGA + Electoral wards) see the rest of the article here http://lagosstreetmap.blogspot.com/2011/10/error-…

What do you think?

By: badesemowo

badesemowo — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 00:52:45 +0000

Hi tim , I know this has been a while since you were talking about this .. just wanted to bump this and say thank you for point me in the right direction … watch this space…

By: Leke Adeniji

Leke Adeniji — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 13:23:24 +0000

Hi Tim,
I am delighted about your interest and effort on geocoded address for Nigeria. I am also interested in your crowd sourcing, please sign me on. Meanwhile, most of the links are not are not responsive.

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 22:01:11 +0000

Interesting comment Aniedi and thanks for the link to geopostcodes. I checked their data out but wasn\’t too impressed with their offering. Their geocoding is only accurate to the regional level which in my opinion isn\’t good enough for me to justify the investment but for the organization, that\’s great. I\’m thinking that we could use a service like Geonames (http://www.geonames.org/) to geocode a number of the locations in that database.

By: Aniedi Udo

Aniedi Udo — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 03:54:35 +0000

This is remarkable stuff. Unreserved commendations must go out to you, Dipo & Kayode. I have been surfing the net for the last 3 hours in a frustrating roundabout fashion looking for this data. (I have also 'dreamt' of this data for about 2 years and had searched for it 'occasionally', while doing other stuff online).

There is so much that can & needs to be done with this data as you have rightly pointed out, especially in this buildup to the 2011 elections. As technology enthusiasts/professionals, we owe it to our country to contribute our quota to the salvation of this country (hope I'm not sounding too religious). It's the early hours of November 3rd 2010, and the mid-term elections in the US are rounding up. The media networks (CNN, Fox etc), the Political parties (democrats, republicans) are spitting out real-time mapped data as votes are collated in a country that is 10 times the size of Nigeria. Exit polls, historical voting patterns, election results etc. all laid out on maps. Please sign me up for the crowdsourcing intiative(s).

I got to know about Fusion Tables last week while doing a bit of research for Google DevFest 2010 in Lagos (http://code.google.com/events/devfests/2010/lagos.html) & I'm elated to discover that we have this sort of extremely valuable data already in the cloud. There's a lot we can do with this data, Google MapMaker, Maps API & Geolocation API, as well as utilities like OpenStreetMap (http://www.openstreetmap.org). I also discovered a 'paid for' (I haven't paid … yet) service from GeoPostcodes that offers this data inclusive of latitude & longitude for about 40 euros & the data looks pretty extensive (http://www.geopostcodes.com/sample_nigeria). You can actually browse through the data for free in a 'very little utility' way, but it costs 40 euros to gain access to the download site for 1 month. What do you think?

Once again, kudos for a job well done & an interesting blog post.

aniediudo [at] gmail [dot] com

By: Ireti Ajala

Ireti Ajala — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 05:53:50 +0000

Hi Tim, i am very happy to find a great mind like yourslef interested in this subject. I wrote an article recently on my blog on how NIPOST and Nigerian Federal Survey can synergise to create an advance National Address database and also popularise the postcode system in Nigeria. In this article i proposed a NAG (National Address Gazetteer) that will underpin geographic decision made by Nigerian telecom, hospital, electricity provision, and government in all admistrative levels. Private companies in Nigeria like banks, insurance, etc can buy this data and attach their own data to it to evaluate the geographic spread of their operations. This can be a very lucrative business proposition for NIPOST and consortium and they could poetentially make enough money from it to make them stop going to Abuja with caps in hand every year soliciting for govt funds.____Read more about this article here: http://lagosstreetmap.blogspot.com/2010_09_01_arc...