The Nigeria Geological Survey Agency (NGSA), has debunked report of alleged 3.8 magnitude earth tremor in Gwagwalada and Abaji, satellite towns in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja, as allegedly captured by an Earthquake Monitoring Station at OAU, Ile-Ife, Osun State, on January 10, 2020.
This was stated by Deputy Director of Geophysics Department, NGSA, Abah Usman, while on visit to the towns the earth tremor alleged occurred.
Usman said had it been there was such shaking of the earth in that part of Abuja residents would have been thrown into confusion and pandemonium, and the agency would have no doubt seriously alerted residents.
“For you to effectively record earth quake, it’s not something that is obtainable from single equipment, and these equipments can record vibration, so for you to get the place where the tremor occurred, you have to use at least minimum of three equipments.
“Now, if there is a problem in configuration, you can pick so many things beneath the earth, but there are those we now classify as tremors. I
f there is configuration problem, you may think an event is one that is not. Secondly, you can force an event to happen for whatever reason.
“We are now faulting it saying its manner of information dissemination did not follow the right channels. They should have confirmed and compared. Apart from NGSA, there are agencies like NASRDA that have metres and none of them has picked it and earth tremor is not something that can be hidden. “What struck me the most was for an earth tremor of 3.8 magnitude to have taken place. If it happened it Abaji, that impact would have alerted someone in Jere, but nobody is aware of that impact and the distance is not much.”
