By: ‘The Rock Post’ Team
Dr. Abulrazak Abubakar Garba, the incumbent Director General of Nigeria Geological Survey Agency, (NGSA) was born some 54 years ago. He started his nursery education in Sokoto where he also went to Capital school after which he proceeded to Government College, also in Sokoto. Subsequently, he did a brief stint at Federal school of Arts and Science, Sokoto before gaining admission to Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria to undertake an ‘A’ Level in the School of Basic Studies. Upon completion, he was admitted to the Geology Department of the institution, which did not come by accident. It was a course he chose on his own as a first choice due to the passion he has for it. In this no-holds-barred exclusive towards the centenary celebrations of NGSA, He took The Rock Post on a historic tour of the Agency – Past, Present and future. Excerpts:
Q. What are the major objectives and mandate of NGSA and how do you intend actualizing them?
R. For any institution to succeed, its focus, objectives and mandate should change with time to reflect the necessities of that very moment. The Nigeria Geological Survey started officially in 1919, borne out of the fact that prior that period, between 1903 and 1904, we used to have what was called Mineral Survey of Northern and Southern Protectorate. Exigencies of that time made the government of the day to adopt an approach to merge them as Geological Survey of Nigeria in 1919. When the colonial masters came into the country, their objective was not to establish Geological Survey in 1903 and 1904. The major aim was to look for minerals and pursue the raging World War as at that point in time. Subsequently, from 1919, the Geological Survey emanated. At that moment, they were able to discover minerals like Tin, Coal, Tantalite and many others. From 1919, the colonial masters felt they should know the locations of some of the minerals we have here and the geological background. So the focus of the Geological Survey at that time was identifying the rock types and tying them with the minerals in these locations. As events unfolded, NGSA by its mandate was to carry out geological mapping, expedition, reconnaissance on minerals, exploration to a limited extent, hydrogeology, engineering geology and mineral analysis for itself and industry. By 2006, after discovering that there would be problems if NGSA still continues to operate as a department under the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development for obvious reasons. These problems may come in terms of of funding, and mode of operation which was not really consistent with the bureaucracies of the system. So, we had to evolve into an agency and operate as autonomous and semi-autonomous organization under the ministry. Semi-autonomous because you cannot have 100 percent autonomy since we still operate under the ministry, unless we are trying to deceive ourselves. As far as we draw funding from the government, we cannot be totally said to be autonomous. Your budgetary performance depends on what the government gives to us. If you are self-funded, then you can say you are autonomous. Again, the mandate was reviewed a bit further in the sense that we had to carry out more responsibilities. Some duties have been removed if you take note. When the ministry of water resources was to take off, the core staff of the Ministry of Water resources were from hydrogeology division of Geological Survey Department of Nigeria. Some of the key staff of the Ministry of Environment are old staff of GSD. When Itapke was to start, some of our staff were the pioneer staff of Steel Raw Materials Exploration Agency which they called National Steel Development Agency at that point in time. You can see that some organizations were pulled out of NGSA up to the point of becoming a ministry, like Ministry of Water Resources with big budget but the Geological Survey never grew even with high responsibilities. It is the activities of the pioneers of Geological Survey that led to the formation of Coal corporations. Some staff of Mining corporations are people who worked in Geological Survey. Late Prof. Woakes who later taught me in the university for instance was a staff of Geological Survey before he left for ABU and he worked closely with people in Nigeria Mining Corporation. He brought prominent people like Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, Prof. Ibrahim Garba up. So, when you talk of geology in Nigeria, you cannot do without the agency. Going back to the mandate, look at the Act establishing it, you will see there are a lot of things to be done. At the advent of the Agency, we opened up centres like National Geo-hazard Monitoring Centre to deal with natural disasters, like landslide, erosion etc. We have another centre called Centre for Marine Geoscience. That is an added responsibility. It was so small but now a full-fledged center. So, the agency’s mandates are increasing but the budget is not increasing. The Nigeria Geological Survey Agency, have input in every facet of life from hydro, environment, mineral resources, geology, medical geology and others. We do cover all areas of existence.
Q. What are the progressive and cumulative works the agency has in its archive since establishment?
R. The Nigeria Geological Survey Agency (NGSA) as a body commenced operation in the year 2006. There were changes in nomenclature, condition of service of staff equally occurred and mode of operation equally changed. The staff of GSN automatically migrated to the agency. Ninety percent of people who started NGSA as an agency were all staff of Geological Survey of Nigeria. In terms of works or activities, we delved into many things. Earlier, our activities were purely analogue. But at the advent of the agency, we went digital to conform with the global standards of practice as most of our maps became digital. We entered into aggressive mapping, exploration and evaluation of all the mineral resources in the country including several commodities nationwide. We started with assessment of pegmatite minerals across the country only to discover that the pegmatite minerals were not really constrained to a particular area but everywhere including places like Obudu, South South part of Nigeria. Some Northern parts of the country which were not included in the belt, like Zamfara etc. We were able to produce a new mineral and geological map of the country. Airborne survey of the whole country was also undertaken at the advent of the agency. To match the development I mentioned earlier, that exigencies of the time determine what your focus will be, we have discovered that we are operating a mono-economy in the country. We want to diversify our economy which is impossible without focusing on the mineral commodities that we have. Besides agriculture, we can also use other sources such as solid minerals. The current government decided to focus on solid minerals development and NGSA was tasked to drive the process. We therefore came up with a program which is now known as the National Integrated Mineral Exploration project (NIMEP). The design of the project was conceived in NGSA when I was Director of Economic Geology. I lead the team that designed it. The ministry felt that since I am the designer, I best understand how to implement it. That is how I became the chairman of the implementation committee of NIMEP. The development of mineral resources was put on the fast lane and what this means is that aggressively we have to pursue that aspect of the focus of government. If Nigeria were to be China, the school curriculum would have by now changed to focus on the national need of this very time. For instance, you have to understand mapping to be a good geologist but that should not be the principal focus only, other aspects should follow. If Nigeria were to be China, now that we are looking at minerals away from the period when it was only mapping, we should focus on minerals and discovery so that when our students come from the university, they will have a thorough understanding of how to look for minerals and make discoveries. Therefore, NGSA has contributed immensely to the development of geosciences and mineral discoveries in Nigeria.
Q. Tell us about the departments under the agency?
R. Structurally, we have three technical departments though planning to expand and maybe reorganize our system hopefully by the end of the year. A NEEDS assessment was carried out by Geological Survey of France and at the end of it, we decided that in order to achieve optimum performance and in line with the current demand of our time, we need have to reorganize our system and mode of operation. We are also in the process of developing a roadmap for the agency. The roadmap will elucidate the focus of the agency in the immediate term, short term, medium and long term along with anticipated deliverables. The three technical departments of the agency which are Economic Geology Department, Applied and Engineering Geology Department and Regional Geology Department at the headquarters here, plus a service department, Admin & Finance. We also have what we call ‘CENTRES’. They are Centres of Excellence to address some specific issues like National Geo-hazard monitoring centre located in Awka, Centre for Marine Geosciences, in Yenegoa and a laboratory in Kaduna known as National Geosciences Research Laboratory. There is also the National Geosciences Information Centre (NGIC) which is hosted within the headquarter. They are in charge of our museum and other aspects of disseminating and archiving information. Through the World Bank, we are working with the MinDiver project and British Geological Survey to help us digitize some of our colonial geosciences data. The essence is to ensure we grow digital and harmonise all our data sets on a single platform for ease of retrieval, storage and discourage the idea of individuals having or keeping data which becomes difficult to access when they depart.
Q. What is the difference between geo-hazard centre and earthquake management centre?
R. Ideally, the earthquake installation is not a centre of its own. The events that led to the procurement of these equipment happened in Abuja so we had to install, manage and control them from here.
Q. Talking about mapping which is your cardinal objective, how far and wide have you gone in achieving that?
R. We have not achieved a nationwide coverage in terms of ground mapping. However, through other means like Remote sensing, I will say we have adequate information. Do not forget that mapping is very expensive though we are pursuing that aggressively. We have done quite a lot that we are supposed to push out. We publish maps alone or publish with bulletins. The process of having maps with bulletins is when we say we have completed the mapping. The process of publishing bulletins involves bringing resource persons and researchers so that what we are churning out meets the requirement of the industry and the academia. We have so many of these maps on ground but the process has to be completed. When you invite the resource persons, they have to go and crosscheck which involves money. The country cannot be considered to have been adequately covered because it is an ongoing exercise. Depending on demand, we may publish on different scale.
Q. Your mapping, does it involve identifying and quantifying the economic metals and mineral deposits in Nigeria? If yes, what breakthroughs has the agency recorded regarding metallic, industrial and energy minerals?
R. In terms of quantification, ours is to provide information to de-risk the mining sector. Even the mapping itself is part of the de-risking and it is progressive till we get to the level of quantification. Geological Surveys worldwide do mapping, research, survey and all sorts of activities within their professional calling, but then quantification in terms of an investor coming to take it and start mining, we do not do that. We have been mapping and doing pockets of evaluation across the country. With our evaluation and data set, generated within the industry, we can put it together, get the stakeholders in the industry who understand the language and what the industry needs to work with us with, take it to the level where it will be short of doing some little works and you can start mining. Identify any of these mineralization and potential targets and broad track of mineralization. What some people need to understand, especially those who think towards the academia aspect for instance at the level of NIMEP, we are able to identify several targets and rank them according to their potentials within a broad area of mineralization, identify one target and do the job up to the level that a company can come and continue. Once one company comes in, believe me you will see flood of other companies coming. That is what we aspire to do and I can assure you, we will get there very soon.
Q. The defunct Nigeria Mining Corporation (NMC) had some special responsibilities with respect to mining development, how has their disbandment impacted on your Agency?
R. The reason government decided to disband the Nigeria Mining Corporation (NMC) was that prior to the review of the Nigerian minerals and mining Act, it was apparent it cannot be an operator and a regulator, which is not the norm in the world. Nigeria cannot stand alone. The implication is that you will do things to your favour. Again, the defunct Corporation was not meeting the aspirations of the government. The government felt it was not the trend globally and with the new Act coming up, the best thing was to disbanded the Corporation. Mandatorily, they are to develop while ours is to generate geosciences information though without defined clear boundary between their functions. Infact, at that point in time, much of the funding went to the Nigeria Mining Corporation to the detriment of Nigeria Geological Survey Agency (NGSA) they even usurped some of our activities. Then when you make discoveries, a special exploration license or something like that would have been placed on it by the Nigeria Mining Corporation making it inaccessible for NGSA to carry out any further activity. People are evolving to Mining Corporations that allow them to develop. You can have a Mining Commission, like in Ghana that manages some of these activities so that everything comes under the same umbrella but certainly not development and even going into mining.
Q. Some Geological Survey organizations in other countries have related programs for water such as aquifer level determination, stream flow information and natural water quality assessment program, is this part of your Agency’s responsibility?
R. Some of the challenges we have in this country is having a clear delineation of scope of activities of each agency, parastatal or even department. While lack of delineation is there but human beings, sometimes, want to usurp the function of the other. That is the bane of the black world. But then as NGSA, we still carry out some hydrogeological surveys to generate information and hydrogeology. The Centre for marine geosciences study coastal aquifers to determine chemical composition, salt water intrusion and so on. Yes, we gather such information and ideally, we do have synergy with other sister organizations like Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA) and Ministry of Water Resources but then in terms of minerals and the dynamics of hydrology, they are interwoven and we just have to work together.
Q. You have earthquake monitoring devices. Can it detect nationwide, the location and magnitude of seismic events?
R. What led to the procurement and installation of the equipment is the earth tremor we experienced in Abuja the Federal Capital Territory. Some of our officers were trained during the installation. We have one of the equipment here in the headquarter, one in Kaduna, one in Nasarawa State University, another one in University of Abuja and one in Veritas University, Bwari. Before I came on Board, the consultant had not perfected the installation to the extent that we synchronize the five of them. On resumption, I quickly mobilized and ensured the equipment were synchronized to record seismic events across the country and even outside. We have a relationship with the centre in Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife so we try to crosscheck records of these information which is the trend all over the world. I can assure you that presently, we can detect seismic events locally and to some extent, outside Nigeria though the perfection of the Epicenter which needs three seismic centres for triangulation, we are trying our best to perfect it. The management of these equipment in some of the institutions they are kept is less than the required standard. We are trying to establish a kind of Memorandum of Understanding with the centre in OAU. Furthermore, we are hoping that each of the geographical zones, with the support of the government have some of the equipment. At the end of the day, all the blind areas that we can detect within the country will now key into the international network of seismic stations. That way, we can be exchanging information for proper understanding. Ultimately, the goal is to develop Centre for Seismic Studies in Nigeria, hosted within the NGSA. It is part of the roadmap.
Q. How upgraded are the maps you currently have and what is their coverage?
R. In producing our maps, we value contribution by credible institutions to update them. So, even when you finish mapping and new information evolves from us or credible institutions, we adopt it. For instance, we may have mapped a place and in the course of mineral assessment discover that the boundary has to adjust, we quickly adjust. If the university comes and says, this boundary is not here it should be there, as far as it is credible, we do the needful. We also have, on different scales mineralogical, geological and structural maps of the country along with airborne maps which include Total magnetic intensity maps, Radiometric and Geochemical maps covering at least 12 cells out of the 44 cells in the country. All these are available for interested parties or stakeholders to access at any point in time for their use.
Q. Educate us on the scientific reports generated by NGSA in bulletins, circulars, special reports, general interest publications and others?
R. We have publications in which the maps are included. Apart from the maps, we have bulletins with records of geological survey and occasional papers. These are the key publications. Mineral resources series or Dossier, where we publish the activities and reports of our mineral investigation is another. We also publish all our exploration on evaluation activities on different commodities. Occasionally, we carry out some special investigations. One instance is when the report of lead poisoning broke out, we did a survey, I led the team and we had a very good publication on that. We had interaction with stakeholders from medicines San frontieres and we were able to pick some information by looking at the distribution of lead in the soils around the towns within the local mining communities where they are mining. Interestingly, we found it is possible that the sudden death is linked to the discovery of another site that has high arsenic content. Even though the lead poisoning is not ruled out, it may not really be the cause of the deaths. When we revealed this to medical personnel from Medicines San Frontieres, he agreed with us to some extent that there could be some other things. The people living in those areas may not really know what exactly happened but those sudden deaths may not be unconnected with arsenic.
Q. I was wondering if it is lead, how come in the Benue trough where a lot of lead is being mined, there is no record of such deaths?
R. What happened in the case of Dareta, Tsunke and Bagega in Zamfara has to do with the discovery that we have gold associated with the lead unlike the one you have in the Benue trough. For decades, people in Zamfara have been mining lead and there is no case of death associated with it. Suddenly, on discovering the high gold content, they introduced their household implements to pan which became very rampant and the same milling machine in Gold processing is also used for feeding. They will only rinse it. With the discovery that some of these contain arsenic and other elements, we swung into action. There is a report on that published in one of our occasional papers. We have many of such publications and as part of our centenary activities, we are going to publish more. We have published some at NMGS in Enugu. As soon as the publishers are done with their activities, more will come.
Q. These publications, how easily accessible are they to an investor, researcher, academia or interested party?
R. It is very easy. The procedure is that you purchase them. Some we give for free as complementary copies. If you need them, even in soft copies, you pay through our TSA account and we make them available.
Q. The Federal Executive Council, in 2017 approved the roadmap for growth and development of the Nigeria Mining Industry through the Ministry of Mines and Steel, is NGSA, being strategic, keying into this vision?
R. When we were to design NIMEP, the roadmap states that we should look at metallic minerals for export to generate foreign exchange. We considered at Lead, Zinc, Gold, Silver, Tantalite, Lithium. In industrial minerals, we took Baryte, included it as part of the NIMEP in pursuit of what is in the roadmap through intervention but at the agency level while having our own mineral resources assessment and evaluation program. The roadmap states that we should look at the downstream application of some of these commodities. We have some good reports on Kaolin in some parts of the country and we are still going with that depending on the budgetary allocation. We try to evaluate their size and their industrial applicability, just to ensure the local industries see how they tie. Recently we carried out an assessment of carbonate Rocks in Nigeria which include Marbles, Limestone, Magnesite and others across the country. We were able to come up with an interactive map that is useful. We can integrate it into our website and use it for what we want. Those maps are unique because NGSA has never done such a thing before now. Clicking on it will give you a window on which you will see a picture of the outcrop and possibly, activities going on. Besides, we have a detailed or semi-detailed kind of evaluation of the resource size based on what we can see at that time – where they are drilling and the focus which is useful for assessment. It includes average chemical composition of each location in line with the roadmap. Additionally, we carried out other investigations on some Lead Zinc site. The idea is to help us carry out beneficiation test to provide information that will help us know the value and what minerals are in certain areas. This is intended to guide the Mines Inspectorate Department in computation of royalties that come to the government. If we are able to complete that for the country, the guide would have been available for them to use.
Q. Is NGSA contributing to the West African sub-region in the development of the knowledge of geology?
R. If you look at West African sub-region and Africa in general, you will understand that NGSA has been playing a leading role in this regard. Currently, Nigeria is holding the position of the president of Organization of African Geological Surveys. We recently concluded an Annual General Meeting where we had an election and Senegal will take over from Nigeria effective January 2020. We had technical session at the meeting where I invited some of our staff to make presentations on some contemporary things we are doing, including NIMEP. Thereafter, about four African countries showed interest in NIMEP as a fantastic model and showed interest to adopt. Our staff have been involved in presentations in several conferences across the region. They are being invited within the continent and beyond. You can see That the NGSA is doing well and we are repositioning the NGSA.
Q. In line with getting competent hands in the mining sector, what roles can the NGSA play in upgrading the quality of Nigeria’s exploration geologists?
R. That has been a very big issue to discuss in recent times especially for those who don’t have belief in what we are doing. As an Economic Geologist and Mineral Explorationist, I have been involved in quite a significant exploration activity both private and official capacity and by providence rising to become the Director of Economic Geology along my professional calling. While there, I initiated the NIMEP project. This is borne out of my experience working with a lot of competent persons, interacting with them either in official or personal capacity. I spent quite a fortune to undergo a JORC training in Cardiff. I was supported at that point in time by several individuals like former honourable minister, ARCH. Musa Sada was quite supportive. Having seen all these, I felt that the previous works we have been doing were too academic. They are not tailored towards the industry. We have to marry the two to succeed as a geological survey agency and as a nation. All the competent persons and the private individuals we have been bringing to look at what NGSA have been doing said the same thing about being too academic. It is a bitter truth and we have to understand it otherwise we are going nowhere. So in the design we may have Nigerian competent persons outside the country but we do not have them in the country practicing because the environment is not favourable. Bringing a competent person is like hiring a consultant medical doctor. Rather than embarking on academic exercise again, if the government can provide the funding, let us do something that will meet the requirement of the academic and focus more on the industry. In the design of the NIMEP, I looked at how we can work it out. So I said the project is to be driven by competent persons, therefore the consultant and the contractor must have competent person or persons along with them. To address our lack of capacity in that sector having worked with some of them, learnt from them, trained under them, I said we will have what we call embed staff from NGSA and the Ministry of Mines and Steel. Working with the competent persons to learn and build their capacity in terms of the way they run activities, if it is tailored towards economy. Embed staff should understand and build the capacity of NGSA and the Ministry. So you can see the foresight we put into the project. By the time our generation will be leaving the scene, we have some crop of people who have gone through this system. Why we don’t have competent hands? The focus has been only on mapping. If you give a Nigerian geologist a job to carry out, he will excel IN Mapping but to carry terms of understanding the dynamics of Ore deposits and how to manage it, he may not do much. That is the major issue but a lot of people do not understand it.
Q. You came on board as the DG NGSA January, 2019. Within this period, what has been your scorecard?
R. The results you are seeing from NIMEP is number one. It is left for you to judge because from design to execution stage, it was done by my humble self. In terms of exploration, we are currently working on Phosphate. It has become a serious issue in Nigeria. When I was a Director, I carried out an assessment and I discovered that there is no basis for us not to carry out a full-fledged exploration activity on the Phosphate project and currently we are working on that. In the Phosphate project, we are Coring with our team there with our two rigs, we hired a contractor because we don’t have a reverse circulation drilling. So we are currently drilling there. So at the end of the project, I expect that confidently we should be within 2000 to 3000 meters cumulatively. As it is now, we are beginning to identify areas where you have up to 30 meters or less overburden. So through the drilling activities, we are carving it out. In the analysis which we previously carried out, we discovered that the phosphatic nodules has up to 35 percent P205. This is very good. I took the result of that exercise to OCP in Morocco and that is the beginning of the relationship we are having now with OCP and by the grace of God, there is the possibility that OCP will commence activity if at the end of the day we are able to establish a sizeable resource base for the job. When they were here, they said anything from 15 percent is okay for them. So what we are doing now is the evaluation. Another one is this; Nigeria has been talking about Bitumen. It has been a very long time activities were carried out in that line. On my assumption of duty, I decided to utilize our rig and to God be the glory we were able to do four holes successfully before we relocated and moved the rig to another place because of accessibility problem. This is adding to geosciences information. In terms of mapping which the department is working on, upon my assumption, the last time NGSA published anything was about 5 years ago. Upon my assumption, within 2 months I published what we are doing and that is also another step. We have launched is as part of the beginning of our centenary program. In terms of infrastructure, we have equipped the museum though construction started off with my predecessor but we did a lot of renovation in the environment. We procured the rig but we did not have a lowbed. On assumption of office, we procured a lowbed to carry the rig for its work. Don’t forget we have also embarked on massive training for both our technical and administrative support staff. We also procured an equipment that will aid in the delivery of our mandate which we didn’t have. We bought the spectoradiometer to help interpretation of satellite imagery and match it with our data. By the grace of God, I was able to procure it within two months of getting to the office. We also procured more XRF analyzer. The essence of these is to help us analyze data as they come. In the Kaduna laboratory, a lot is being done there through the goodwill of the ministry and my relationship with them. A lot of construction is going on there. We have procured Fire assay, Sulphur analyzer, carbon analyzer, which we are hoping to install in some of the infrastructure that is being provided. Our workers are happier if you ask them.
Q. What is your desire of NGSA in the next 100 years and what legacy would you want to leave?
R. My desire is to see an organization where you have highly skilled professional officers. This flows from my discovery all along that our support staff are not as supportive as they lack understanding of their roles. They see themselves as different entity from the organization and this constituted a bottleneck. We are in the process of reorientation and reorganization to train those who are trainable and find a placement for those who are not. Talking about my legacy, by the time I leave, I would have left an agency that is virile, efficient, up-to-date and delivering on its mandate, where you will find people who know what to do and do it at the right time in national interest. It is my vision that at the end my tenure, each office will have this XRF analyzer so their work will be highly efficient
