Abuja, Aug. 13, 2023: The Federal Government on Saturday expressed its commitment to transform and promote geological survey activities to global best practices.
The Director-General of Nigeria Geological Survey Agency (NGSA), Dr Abdulrazaq Garba, said in Abuja that the agency had trained a lot of its staff members on geological survey activities.
He added that the effort was to ensure that the NGSA developed neccessary global standard practices required.
“When I came on board as the agency’s D-G, having been in the system and having understood most of the problems or challenges in the system.
“I came up with three plans, first is generation of data for development, the second is to put in place infrastructural development in the sector that is within the system,” he said.
“The infrastructural development is necessary to put in place because having the best brains in the system and there will not be available tools and a conducive environment to actualise the work will be a huge problem,” he said.
Garba said that the third plan he had was to build a strong capacity development across the sector.
According to him, we have visited geological surveys and institutions across the world and we discovered that both non-technical and technical members of the staff are geo-scientists.
“The non-technical members of the staff work together with the technical and they work in a very good mutual understanding.
“So, in our own effort, we ensure that all the staffers are fully trained.
“I mean both the technical, the administrators, accounts and all the members of staff in general.
“The NGSA is an institution whereby we need to continuously building the capacity of the people because it is a research institution,” he said.
The agency’s boss said that the NGSA has done a lot of training and put credible efforts to ensure a strong collaboration with relevant institutions.
He said that the NGSA partnered with Colten University in the area of capacity development, adding that the agency had engaged with embed staffers on various projects.
He said that the essence of involving such people was not just about getting people to work and get money, but offering knowledge and necessary experiences to the people.
“When we were about to start our project, we insisted that we must have what is called internationally recognised competent persons driving the project.
“The reason why the embed staffers has to be part of it is to ensure that the capacity development of our people which we trained will be able to do investigation and report according to international policies.
“The same thing with our support staff, we make sure we train them inline with the international accounting reporting standard.
“We make sure our accountants are well trained.
“We have a system with the server whereby all the components in the system are available and we ensure that all our staffers will report on international based practices.
“Also, our administrative staffers, we send them on training to Administrative Staff College of Nigeria (ASCON) in Lagos State to upgrade them on recent development, ” he said.
The director-general said the NGSA visited other African countries such as Morocco, Nairobi among others to advance the members of the staff by training non geologist, thereby, enhancing their knowledge on geological survey.
He said that the agency had also collaborated with China Geological Survey Bureau Development and Research Center, adding that some of the staffers were presently in China University of geological survey.
He said that the effort and commitment was to ensure that the agency was advance and transform to the global best practices.
