Dr. Abdulrazaq Garba is the Director-General, Nigerian Geological Survey Agency, NGSA. In this interview with FRANCIS KADIRI, he says Nigeria is a major source of raw gold in Dubai, adding that the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has strengthened the agency to fulfil its mandate.
Excerpts:
You rose through the ranks to become the Director General of the Nigerian Geological Survey Agency. How would you describe your appointment, especially since it came at about the same time your colleagues at Mining Cadastre Office and National Steel, Raw Material Exploration Agency were also appointed Directors General?
That the three of us came on board the leadership of mining sector agencies at about the same time is by divine intervention.
Secondly, it is the design of our principals, who, took a look at the overall setting of the mining sector and identified key individuals who have been working in the sector. They want a generation of younger and dynamic people with in-depth professional and institutional experience of the business of mining to drive the sector. These basically are the principal needs of the sector.
God gave His blessings. He made it possible for the three of us to work together over the years, and then appointed us to top leadership positions.
What inter agency synergy exists between your agency and other agencies in the mining sector?
There is an excellent working relation between all the technical agencies within the ministry. The NGSA provides geoscience information for use by the MCO and the larger investing public; we share information and jointly develop capacity with the NSRMEA; we synergise with the Centre for Metallurgical Development (NCMD) in Jos to carry out test beneficiation on some of our mineral commodities and so on and so forth. This has been the beauty of our relationship. We are working together as a team, and we are working in a way that the sector will contribute to revenue generation as spelt out by His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari.
The mining sector got very dismal budgetary allocation in the previous government. Has the situation changed?
When the current administration came on board, the budgetary allocation to NGSA in particular and the Ministry was at its lowest, but that has changed now. If you look at it now, the focus of the present government is to diversify the economy of Nigeria through the mineral industry. Government is sincere in its set goal, and the President knows that funding is vital to the realisation of set goals. As a result of genuine commitment, the set goal is obviously being achieved.
Kindy prove the basis for your judgment
The contribution of the mining sector to the Gross Domestic Product is on the rise. Apart from that, a lot of progressive activities are being implemented while policies are being formulated and implemented to address myriad of challenges.
Nigerians were surprised when we heard that the Nigeria Customs Service seized some quantity of gold. We were surprised because Nigerians did not believe that there was so much gold in the country, despite government’s repeated assurances that Nigeria has a lot of gold. A point of note is that the seizure revealed that, indeed, there is a lot of gold in Nigeria.
Let me give you one information that may surprise you: Nigeria is one of the sources of the raw gold in Dubai! In 2005/2006, I worked extensively on gold in Niger, Kwara, Kogi, Ogun and Kebbi states. We made very reasonable postulation about the existence of gold in Nigeria. We were part of the discovery in Garin Hawal. We have contributed to activities that led to the evaluation of gold resources in Laka, both in Kebbi State. Initially, there were about 15 to 20 people working there, but at the end of about three months, the number rose to about a thousand because gold was discovered, and there was a rush for it.
So apart from budgetary allocation, the Buhari administration has also been able to achieve the establishment of a successful intervention programme designed to look at the key mineral resources among the seven strategic minerals. As a result, we came up with National Integrated Mineral Exploration Project (NIMEP).
Which mineral commodities have been considered for the exploration project?
There are five commodities under consideration, namely: gold, lead-zinc, iron-ore, baryte and pegmatite minerals, which include lithium, tantalum and tin. The project is part of government’s efforts to rapidly generate geoscience information to derisk the sector. To achieve this, we did something to make exploration credible and different: We ensured that recognised world-class consultants and contractors were engaged to execute the project. We also ensured that competent persons drove the projects, from both the contractors’ and consultants’ end.
The rule is that each of the companies must have competent persons with world-class experience to drive the projects under their supervision. In addition, the project would be co-signed by the world-class experts in order to make it attractive to financiers. Provided that the project reports are co-signed by reputable consultants and contractors, we would be able to attract funds from the International Stock Exchange if we are able to make world-class status.
By design, the project aims to achieve results that will meet international standards. This is the first of its kind in this government. Secondly, sometime ago, government executed a project in collaboration with the Cement Training Institute, CTI. The CTI is an agglomeration of cement manufacturers. Before we executed the project, the resource size of carbonate rocks was about four billion, but the project revealed that Nigeria had between 10 to 12 billion metric tons of limestone while marble was estimated at about four billion metric tons.
When you consider this, you will agree that Nigeria is very rich. We were also able to generate interactive maps of some of these commodities to share information about basic technical qualities of carbonate rocks in Nigeria and we hope to upload them on our web portal. When you click on the interactive mineral map, the basic technical information about the respective mineral are revealed, as well as the chemical properties, resource size of that location, and photograph of activities going on in that location at that point in time.
When you click on a location, a window will come up. When you click on the window, you will see the chemical properties, the resource size of the solid mineral and there will also be a photograph of samples and activities in progress in that location.
We have been in discussions with the OCP to seek ways of developing Nigerian phosphate for the manufacturing of fertilizer and chemicals. For your information, OCP is the largest phosphate producer in the world. Currently, we have collaborations, as a result of NGSA activities, that are in progress.
What have you done as a follow up to your findings?
We took our findings to OCP in Morocco. What they told us was that it was agreeable that our phosphate had the quality required to produce some category of fertilizers. They requested that we should provide bulk samples and carry out some more work in order to enable OCP carry out test beneficiation and see whether the size was enough to sustain a big
mining project.
In the course of this administration, the NGSA has been able to secure two drilling rigs and a load bed trailer to convey the rigs to site. As a strategy for increased revenue generation for the sector, NGSA will intensify consultancy services rendered to the public. The agency will also apply the rigs to execute exploration projects that will lead to the realisation of its
mandate.
Plans are in top gear to send one of the rigs to Sokoto. To further prove to you that the Buhari administration is working, we worked on graphite. Recently, I was at an exhibition. Next to Nigeria’s exhibition stand was a Tanzanian company promoting Tanzanian graphite. They asked if we had graphite in Nigeria, we told
them, yes.
