By Palma Ileye
Presidential Flagbearer for the Social Democratic Party, SDP, at the forthcoming 2023 Presidential elections, Prince Adewole Adebayo has affirmed that a change of mindset was the solution to Nigeria’s decaying politics and poor economic growth.
Adebayo who said that the country has to stop playing self destructive politics and address issues of crossroads made this known in Abuja during an interview session with journalists drawn from the print and broadcast media on his road map and agenda for Nigerians if elected President come 2023.
He pointed out that the problem with the country’s politics and leadership was that it has enabled a culture where the rudiments of public service has not been properly understood by the polity.
He said that Nigerians don’t have to the appropriate people to represent them of which the community should be allowed to reach a general concensus of choosing their leaders before we can get it right.
He harped on the need to settle our cultural values, work on corruption by not joining the band wagon and having deep analysis on how to cleanse our defence by redirecting our purpose to change the narrative and overcome the country’s crossroads hence the right type of leadership.
Sighting examples with countries which have charted the right course for their politics, he said Nigeria needed to borrow a leaf from them noting that a change of mindset and understanding the crossroads was the wand to getting it right.
He said, “there is a need to understand what is wrong with Nigeria as a country and to know why Nigeria is at crossroads.”
This according to him was a call for leaders to bring up fresh ideas because the culture from which the country’s leadership had arose over the years has produced rulers who have unsatisfactory, difficult and unhelpful manners thereby leading to the many man made problems which has over the years continue to bedevil the nation’s progress and development.
“There are a lot of problems, if we have to do it how others have done it, we have to change our mindset because if we don’t, we will continue to do what we have been doing before. We will continue to lament and if we are not careful, with the set of new leaders we will continue to lament if we don’t change, Nigerians needs changing their minds if not, things will continue the same ways it has been done before,” he explained.
He maintained that despite the series of change of parties and defections by the so called hungry politicians and of course change of leadership style by same hands, this has not changed the situation or narrative of the country because character problems.
“Until we have people who are not interested in the national wealth then we can achieve success. When a country has a situation where politicians, media and everyone is comfortable with the crossroads, then there never be a way forward. If we vote anyone from the old party who has spent two years we would still get the same results.
And if you look around you see that there’s five categories of people who are in leadership institutions and who are handling the country some are there because they are put there by opportunity and after taken the office he or she realizes that this office is really lucrative and the vicous circle of corruption continues from point to the the other ” the second category of people are those who came in to the public office by accident, in fact someone wrote: “the accidental civil servant”, some are there because of envy, using their various offices witch-hunting one another at the detriment of the poor masses, the fourth are those inheritance from the military changing to civilians to also join in the vicous circle of corruption and hang power around themselves and last category of the people are the visionary peoples but they approach politics from a narrow point of view, their politics is complex with religious, ethnic perspectives and the belief attachment to the effect,” he continued.
He lamented that the genuine people who were interested in leadership have come to the realization that what good leadership required was not what the Nigeria’s politics holds or potrays stressing that there was a need for us to reconcile between our politics and our leadership because politics is the pathway to becoming a purposeful leader.
“By the time you go through the crucible of Nigeria politics, if you have forty percent qualities of leadership in you, you go to almost zero percent because the quality we teaches you things that a good leaders should not do, how to bribe people and others heinous acts, so there’s a need to clean our politics a bit so that people who are potentially good leaders when they go through the crucible of our politics they would become actually good leaders. It takes leadership to do a reconciliation of what we need and what we have, that’s why Nigerians are suffering.
“On Issues of party executives, my encounter when I started politics I found out that the greatest bandits and armed robbers are the party executives who mount toll gate more than police and others security officers before a contestant on the mentality of something must drop monetary or otherwise before any other things happen.
“A typical reference is what play out in the just concluded PDP Presidential Primaries in Abuja with the rumours of dollars flying in air, despite the fact that some of the contestant or rather people who had serve in different capacity as a politicians within such party are well known to the party executives but they will still need to bride their way with dollars before you can decide who becomes your leaders there so the many years of experience of knowing them and what they have done right or wrong is not relevant to the party executives because all they care about is the highest bidder and all this happens within a party structure which shows party structures will only work in your favor if you distribute the dollars,” he added.
The SDP Presidential Flagbearer however said his mission for if elected President was to ensure that the right people were in government while adding that he was going to faithfully implement Chapter Two (2) of the Nigerian
Constitution which he said meant the provision of social welfare consisting of Water, Food, Housing, Education, Healthcare and other amenities which needed to be made available because the country can afford them and the constitution has made provision for every citizens to enjoy such.
He said people should make money from productivity not destruction which he aims to achieve when becoming president adding that Local Governments should be allowed to generate their own revenue hence creating employments.
He also also said that people should not be descriminated based on gender or ethnicity while stressing that every citizen must have social justice.
He further called on the media to help in redirecting the country’s purpose to change its narrative.
[6/8, 10:53 AM] +234 706 298 9403: Quality geoscience data brought more investors into the mining sector- Garba
By Palma Ileye
Director General, Nigerian Geological Survey Agency, NGSA, Dr Abdulrazaq Garba, has said that there has been an influx of investors because of the quality of geoscience data the agency had generated.
Garba made this known yesterday during an interactive session with newsmen in the agency’s headquarters in Abuja.
He stated that it was only the right type of data that could attract appropriate investors noting that the the agency has improved from generating surface maps.
“Before what we do is surface maps but we have improved, we also achieved this using the appropriate tools to produce geodata. We have published the first set of data on geochronology recently, which has to do with ages of minerals,” he said.
Explaining capacity development of the NGSA, the Director General pointed out that the agency was the bridge between the academia and the industry.
He also said that sustainability was the key to driving the mining sector into greater heights as he solicited for more funding to ensure continued growth and development of the economy.
He further stated that the success stories of the Nigeria Geological Survey Agency, NGSA, could be seen in the increased revenue generation of sister agency such as The Nigeria Mining Cadastral Office, MCO, and Mines Inspectorate.
Speaking on the NIMEP Project, he said that it was a means to an end adding that there was no end to data generation as Nigeria was still at the upstream where data generation is very important.
He explained that the project was a success story as it has been able to produce Three Hundred and Thirty Three (333) maps albums presenting the 36 States and resources found in them.
“What we had when I came on board was the Interactive maps, currently we have produced Lithostructural maps that has Tetonic information about Nigeria,” he added
He said Nigeria has high grade hard rock lithium mineral where pockets of occurrences has been discovered stating that its lithium occurrences were of grade and that investors were currently eager to pay large amount for some of the dataset generated
Nigerian Pilot reports that lithium is an element valuable for the production of glass, aluminum products, batteries that recharge mobile phones, laptops, digital cameras and electric vehicles.
“Nigeria lithium is hot cake now, the mineral was discovered in several parts of the country in the course of the National Integrated Mineral Exploration Project, NIMEP, during exploration and we did investigation and came up with analysis and discovered that Nigeria lithium is of high grade.
“High grade in the sense that the standard worldwide for even exploration and mining starts from 0.4 per cent lithium oxide but when we started exploration and mining, we saw one per cent up to 13 per cent lithium oxide content.
“Another advantage of Nigeria lithium is hard rock lithium found and that is what investors are looking out for worldwide.
“We even heard discussion with some private companies with mining licences in Nigeria and they conducted test on the lithium and we also collaborated with Canada on that too,” he said.
He said that all data received from NIMEP were quite exciting and would boost the economy.
NIMEP is a hallmark project that provides reliable geo-sciences information needed by investors to make the right mining investment decisions in Nigeria.
He said that a track of mineralisation almost two to 10 km was discovered close to Abuja, adding that resource evaluation was conducted on the area and anomolous gold, lead and silver were discovered with Tungsten.
“Gold mineralisation found there has high content of tungsten which is used as an additive in the production of steel, therefore, any company mining there will be mining gold associated with lead, silver and tungsten.
Garba said that many companies both local and international investors are interested in the data set generated.
He said that pronouncement would be made soon on companies that had shown interest on those data saying that “what we want to do is we are projecting to we concession the areas that are free through the Nigeria Mining Cadastre Office, NMCO, so interested investors can get licence and data and take it to the next level.
“These are the things we are looking at and working on to ensure that the data we generate are useful to investors.”
Meanwhile in his presentation at the just concluded Nigeria- Africa Natural Resources and Energy Investment Summit, NAFNIS, the NGSA boss disclosed that government had identified seven strategic minerals based on the information available on them.
“The seven minerals are Coal, Iron Ore, Bitumen, Gold, Limestone, Lead/Zinc and Barite,” he listed.
Garba said that the government had invested funds in generating Geoscience data for those minerals to enable investors have adequate knowledge about them.
“Basically, you will agree with me that the business of mining is not meant for government to do investigation on minerals, but in this our particular climate, we need to take this information up to a particular level whereby the minerals will be attractive to investors.
The NGSA has over a hundred years been the sole generator and validator of geo data and geological information.
[6/8, 10:55 AM] +234 706 298 9403: NMGS carries out investigations into gas emission, flare at Emene Enugu
By Palma Ileye
Nigerian Mining and Geosciences Society, NMGS, has said that its team of professionals have carried out an investigation into the gas emission and flare encountered during the drilling of a water borehole at Caritas University Amorji Nike, Emene Enugu, Enugu State.
The 31st President of the NMGS, Alabo Charlesye David Charles stated that the team had interacted with the drillers, the members of the community and other stakeholders and also had immediate impression on the geology and geomorphology of the area.
Charles said that the team had submitted its report and the NMGS hereby presents a summary of the findings of which was suspected that the well penetrated a fracture/fault zone which served as a conduit or migration pathway for hydrocarbon (gas) generated in the deeper buried mature shales of the Nkporo/Enugu, Awgu and Eze-Aku geological formations.
He pointed out that the initial speculation that the flare was methane gas from fracking of the mature and fractured Nkporo/Enugu Formation is discountenanced due to the sustained flare that has maintained its intensity for over 7 days.
He explained that it was possible that the borehole penetrated the angular unconformity zone separating the Awgu/Agbani Sandstone of the Benue Trough and the Nkporo/Enugu Formation in the Anambra basin since the borehole was sited near the margin of the Anambra Basin.
He further explained that Stratigraphic traps may have existed in the basal Nkporo/Enugu Formation as interfingering sands or as stratigraphic/structural combination and sub-unconformity traps at this depth.
Making his recommendations, the NMGS President said that there was an urgent need to extinguish the flare and save the ecosystem and environment from its negative impact disclosing that this could be done by injecting a high-density cement slurry or drilling mud which would be forcefully reinjected into the borehole at high pressure to snuff off oxygen supply and kill the fire.
“Drilling a relief well to kill the pressure and kill the flare may not be feasible because the subsurface geology and structure of the area are not understood.
“Relevant authorities should liaise with experts in the management of blowout and flares in the oil and gas sector in Nigeria on the best method to be deployed in extinguishing the flare.
“Future deep borehole drilling in areas generally underlain by shales, irrespective of drilling history, should employ rotary drilling method using appropriate drilling mud to limit the effect of blowouts since drilling mud helps maintain pressure balance in wells.
“Professional bodies like the NMGS with highly experienced and well-trained geoscientists should be involved in efforts by agencies of government and other organizations to find solutions to this hazard and further investigate the gas resources of the area.
“Detailed geological and geophysical studies should be carried out in the area and environs to help unravel the subsurface structure, stratigraphy and hydrocarbon prospects of the area and by extension of the southern Benue Trough and Anambra Basin.
“If the gas resource in the area is found to be substantial, the federal government and Enugu State Government should develop a framework to harness the gas resources to enhance industrialization and job creation for the benefit of the state and the nation,” he continued.
He added that as the foremost professional body in Nigeria with a pool of highly experienced and well-trained professionals, the NMGS has played critical roles in the development of the natural resources of the nation.
NMGS is the umbrella professional and scientific body of all Geoscientists and Mining Engineers in the Solid Minerals, Oil and Gas, Water and Metallurgical sectors with a membership strength of over 10,000 cutting across both the private and public sectors.
The NMGS has statutory representation in several government agencies and organization including the Nigerian Geological Survey Agency, NGSA, the Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, NEITI, the Council of the Nigerian Mining Engineers and Geoscientists, COMEG, the Petroleum Training Institute amongst others.
