Mr Alex Nwegbu is the Director General, Nigeria Geological Survey Agency, the agency that is statutorily responsible for providing geosciences information and data relating to solid minerals and groundwater resources in Nigeria. In this interview with Francis Kadiri , he discusses the potential of the sector to sustainably address economic challenges while commenting on other sundry issues. Excerpts
What are the statutory roles of the Nigeria Geological Survey Agency ?
We have a value chain when it comes to the development of the solid minerals sector. It’s exploration, development, mining, processing and marketing. The number one in the value chain is exploration. And that is where Nigerian Geological Survey comes in. We provide the information from which all the other processes in the value chain take root.
So, we do the exploration, we tell the investors where they need to look in terms of solid minerals, the quantity and quality of mineral deposits in a particular region, based on the level of information we have. So, fundamentally, we provide information for people to make informed decisions.
The problem with Nigerians is that a lot of people just dabble into something they hardly know. They have not done enough research to get information that would properly guide them on what they should be doing. So the responsibility of NGSA is to bridge that gap and provide information for people who are serious about going into mining.
can confidently tell you that there is hardly any local government in Nigeria that doesn’t have one mineral or the other that can support and sustain a small industry. Most big economies today actually started with small and medium investments in solid minerals
Would you say Nigeria has a comprehensive documentation of solid mineral deposit in the country ?
It depends on the level of availability of the geosciences information. We have a website where we encourage people to go and get as much information as they want. If there are issues they aren’t clear with, we have a platform through which they can direct enquiries to us.
When it comes to information, it is a dynamic thing. We improve on the level of information we have as we engage in our routine activities. For instance, we do geological mapping and generate geological maps. As you know mineral occurrences are a function of the geology of an area. So, we give you a geological map that tells you what kinds of minerals are associated with a particular type of rock. That further narrows you down to where you will search for a particular mineral.
We also have the airborne data. These are data we generate when we fly aircraft at low altitudes. There are also magnetic, electromagnetic and radioactive data that are generated by flying over mineral deposits. But all of these data generated does not mean people who wish to explore won’t do their own independent surveys. They are also free to take samples, go to the laboratories, dig and knowing how deep into the earth crust such minerals occur. In cases where we do not have as much information as a prospective miner might need, we advise the investor on how to go about doing his independent survey.
With proper legislation and investment, do you think the solid minerals sector can take over oil in the nearest future?
Absolutely! In terms of generating such quantum amount of dollars, it may not be to the extent of crude oil, but we can go very far. But most importantly, in terms of employment generation, it will definitely surpass that of oil.
Geologically, oil occurrences are restricted to particular sedimentary basins. But for solid minerals, I can confidently tell you that there is hardly any local government in Nigeria that doesn’t have one mineral or the other that can support and sustain a small industry. Most big economies today actually started with small and medium investments in solid minerals. They set up cottage industries all over the place to cater for the sector. We could adopt such and this will employ hundreds of local citizens into the sector, even if it is informally.
What percentage of the nation’s abundant resources have we been able to fully exploit?
Presently, gold, tin, tantalite, limestone, manganese, coal, bitumen, iron ore, are some of the minerals the country has in commercial quantity. Unfortunately most of them are just lying there because we have not had the investors both local and foreign with such financial and technical muscle to actually go into the mining sector.
The idea basically is to attract those big investors from outside of the country because, at the moment, mining in Nigeria is only being operated at local and artisanal levels where locals just get shovels and other such crude implements and begin to scratch the surface of the earth.
In South Africa for instance, they go as far as one kilometer to mine solid minerals. But here in Nigeria, you hardly see anybody exploiting minerals at more than 50 metres. So, technically, we have not started any serious mining in Nigeria, and that is why we want to reposition the entire sector to attract these foreign investors because once you go out and ask people to come and invest in Nigeria, the first thing they ask is give me information on what mineral to invest in. The quality of information given to them would determine their investment level. But unfortunately over the years, we have not been able to generate such sophisticated technical information because the country seems not to see the need to really invest in the sector.
Why is it difficult generating such technical data?
How do you generate information if you do not have the wherewithal to generate such information? For instance you need operational vehicles, you need equipment, and you need a functional laboratory, so many other things. All of these are tied to money, and when you do not have sufficient funds to do it, what do you then do? There is absolutely no way you can effectively function. As you know, Geological Survey has been around for a long time. Many of our solid minerals like tin, columbite, limestone, that we depended on as a country for income generation a long time ago, were as the result of activities of the Geological Survey.
But ever since the discovery of oil, there has been a decline in the interest level of the solid minerals sector. It might surprise you that then because of the very sensitive nature of this establishment, the Director of the Geological Survey reported directly to the president. That was how sensitive and important the agency was then. In fact, prior to this time, the present Ministry of Water Resources was a parastatal under Geological Survey. Most of the staff that started the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation were staff of the Geological Survey Agency, but can you compare NNPC with NGSA now? No. So, the sector has so much been neglected that people have lost sight of the relevance of the functions of the agency and how critical the agency is.
Why not extend the same commitment given to the oil sector to the solid minerals sector?
The oil we are enjoying today surely was under exploration for more than 20 years before results were achieved. But politically, we are not willing to have a sustained solid mineral exploration for 10 years because everybody is in a hurry to get results. So when you approach some of the policy makers telling them you need to do a sustained exploration work for solid minerals, they back out because it wouldn’t yield immediate dividends.
Subsequent governments have regarded it as an area of uncertainty and they would always demand to know the possibility of actually finding a worthwhile mineral given the huge amount of money that would be committed to exploration. It is therefore a case of understanding the dynamics and mechanism of the sector.
Look at the pharmaceutical companies; they use clay which we have in abundance as a raw material. What stops the country from setting up huge cement factories given the abundance of limestone, the chief component of cement?
It requires a form of commitment for us to bring this to a level where they can actually support our local industries. And once the industries are moving all other linkages associated with industrialisation, and the entire system will be brought up. So it’s not just about the volume of the dollars it is going to give us. But in terms of the upliftment of the general economic standard of this country, solid minerals hold the
key.
