By John Ikani
The Federal Government of Nigeria has urged residents of Saki in Oyo State to remain calm over the earth tremor witnessed in a part of the town on Tuesday, September 7.
Director-General of the Nigeria Geological Survey Agency (NGSA), Dr Abdulrazaq Garba made the call while confirming the incident to newsmen in the nation’s capital Abuja.
Garba who explained that earth tremor is a natural occurrence which humans don’t have control over, added that a team has been sent to access the level of damages and pacify the community because they were in panic.
The NGSA DG further stated that the agency has only six seismograph monitoring stations across the country that is being used to monitor the occurrence of earth tremors.
He added that the agency was able to capture predictive analysis from Ilorin which monitors Saki and areas surrounding it.
Garba said the agency needs more equipment to help manage such occurrence, noting that consistent monitoring of the tremors would help alert and manage such situations.
He noted that for quite some time, sesmistic data has not been captured therefore, there is no accurate compilation of appropriate information.
What you should know
A tremor is an earthquake of low or moderate intensity.
Epicentre is the point on the surface of the Earth that is directly above the underground point (called the focus) where fault rupture commences, producing an earthquake.
A seismic zone is used to describe an area where earthquakes tend to focus.
A fault zone is a fracture or zone of fractures between two blocks of rock. Faults allow the blocks to move relative to each other. This movement may occur rapidly, in the form of an earthquake
Although Nigeria is not located within the major seismic zones of the world; over the years, several minor earthquakes have been experienced in some parts of the country.
The first recorded Earth tremor in Nigeria occurred in Warri in 1933 while between 1933 and 2000 Nigeria experienced 15 Earth tremors.
In June 2021 The Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife reported that an earth tremor of low magnitude occurred in Southwest Nigeria around 1100 GMT on Saturday the 5th.
The report further revealed that the epicentre was somewhere along the NW-SE direction of Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria roughly placed close to Omu-Aran in North-Central Kwara State.
The possible mechanism for the Nigerian Earth tremors has been attributed to Earth movements associated with NE-SW trending Ifewara-Zungeru fault zone extending from the Atlantic Ocean into the country.
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