Prof. Danladi Matawal, Director-General, Nigerian Building, and Road Research Institute (NIBRRI) has warned the nation not to take any tremors for granted.
Matawal in a statement he signed on Monday in Abuja said that there was a need to search immediately where the recent tremors in the Federal Capital Territory were being propagated from.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that there were earth shakings that happened around Mpape and part of Maitama District of the FCT last Thursday.
He further advised the nation to design a set of actions to mitigate the tremors’ effect if it was man-made or artificial, whether from deep explosives or mining.
“Are we constructing a tunnel in Abuja? Then the explosive waves must be attenuated and dumped at the source of the explosion.
“City residents also need to be warned and trained on responses to such an impending disturbance.
“If natural, then we should prepare for evacuation because major earth tectonic activities are always preceded by pre-shocks and minor tremors due to the straining and splitting of pieces of plates near the epicentre.
“Volcanoes and Earthquakes are calamities and Nigeria is not prepared for that and we must believe that with the calm already established, we can still claim our extinct innocence,’’ he said.
He said no scientist could disprove that Nigeria was not extinct as there were no records of recent volcano or earthquake in recorded history in the country.
The director general, however, maintained that all it took to translate from “Extinct’’ to “Active’’ was one major Seismic activity.
According to him, for the purposes of scientific and engineering technocrats, the nation must watch out for the reasons for the tremors.
“It is expected that by now, a set of experts and non-experts should be brainstorming somewhere in the FCT over the matter.
“Experts and non-experts from Ministry of Defence, Mines and Solid Minerals, Police, Science & Tech, Transport, NASDRA, NEMA, Fire Service, COREN, Geological Society among others.
“On Sunday, we had an account of someone who lives in Mpape who said dogs, in particular, barked relentlessly. While we prayed fervently that this is not a natural phenomenon because of the extinct nature of our geomorphology.
“Nonetheless the first warning of seismic activity in active regions of the world is animal behaviour.
“Dogs will bark wildly, cats will run frantically, rats will run frenzy in the house; horses will break their enclosures, etc.
“This is because their extrasensory senses from whiskers make them sense activity in the earth’s crust when bits and pieces of the crust are fracturing along a prospective fault line instigated at fracturing epicenter.’’
(NAN)
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