Nigeria's Untapped Resources

Nigeria's Untapped Resources

Nigeria is well known as an oil producing country, but have you ever given thought that there may be other untapped resources that are of higher economical value? Take for example bitumen; which is sticky, tar-like form of petroleum whose primarily use is for paving roads. Did you know that at approximately 42.74 billion metric tonnes, Nigeria has the second largest deposit of bitumen in the world? It covers 120 kilometres of the coastal belt around Lagos, Edo, Ogun and Ondo States of the country.



If we tapped into this resource, Nigeria could benefit in two ways: all the roads in the country could be fixed as bitumen is the main ingredient in tarmac, secondly through technological advances; it is now common to upgrade bitumen into synthetic crude oil. The largest bitumen deposit in Athabasca, Canada has become very profitable especially since the increase in oil prices. As of 2006 Canadian crude bitumen production averaged about 1.1 million barrels per day and was projected to rise to 4.4 million barrels per day by 2020. The total amount of crude bitumen in Alberta which could be extracted is estimated to be about 310 billion barrels which at a rate of 4.4 million barrels per day would last about 200 years. I believe that eventually the natural oil Nigeria produces will one day cease and we better start thinking of alternatives. Bitumen can provide the same if not more financial stability than raw crude oil; lest we forget it can also be used to build all the roads we so regularly complain about. Can you believe we have so much bitumen but we still import it when we need to re-build roads? How absurd!



Though Bitumen was discovered in Nigeria over a century ago, the mineral has laid waste due to neglect, distractions and undue diversions. I believe that the commercialization of bitumen will aid the nation's economy and reap many benefits such as creating thousands of jobs, boosting foreign exchange earnings, as well as promoting infrastructural rehabilitation development and expansion. There is no doubt that we require more investors in Solid Minerals development , however they must be mindful of the need to provide adequate protection for the environment in which they will operate, and in particular, to be sensitive to the sensibilities of the communities within which they will carry out their business activities.



Nigeria has a lot of gifted people who can provide world changing benefits, but does the community or government tap into this talent or take advantage of it, no! After all have you heard of Philip Emeagwali? I can bet not. So who is Philip Emeagwali, and what has he done that has made him so famous? Emeagwali first entered the international limelight in 1989 when he received the prestigious Gordon Bell Prize for performing the world's fastest calculation at 3.1 billion calculations per second. This calculation was remarkable not only because it was twice as fast as the previous world record, but also because of the method used to achieve this phenomenal task. Rather than use a multimillion dollar supercomputer, Emeagwali used the Internet to access 65,536 small computers simultaneously (called massively parallel computers). This technology is revolutionizing the oil industry as it is used to help simulate how to recover oil from oilfields, thus helping oil producing nations (including Nigeria) to efficiently extract more oil and increase their oil revenues. It is also applicable to the field of meteorology as it can be used to help predict weather patterns for the next 100 years forecast.
Since this invention, Emeagwali has made numerous other achievements and received dozens of honors and awards across the globe in the field of mathematics, science and computers. What I find pitiful is that Emeagwali’s talent was discovered in Nigeria however it could not be nurtured due to lack of government interests and poor educational advancements. He was lucky enough to get sponsorship and study in America where his talent was fully developed and has now changed the use of the internet as we know it. If his talent was taken advantage of in Nigeria, we could easily be at the forefront of scientific and technological advancements. But, just like our oil, Emeagwali was discovered but then exported out of the country only to be refined and sold back to us at a much higher rate as we are not taken full advantage of the resources we as a nation are blessed with.



During the Nigeria Biafra War when Emeagwali was a mere refugee, his kinsfolk developed a self-sufficient petroleum refining method which Nigeria is yet to discover. Philip Emeagwali is not the only Nigerian to use existing resources and push them to their fullest potential to achieve unsurpassed results that would revolutionize several major industries at once. Remember Emmanuel Egbujo, the inventor of the solar powered car?
Nigeria has many of untapped resources, like our climate which can sustain the growth of products such as: cocoa beans, rice, sugar cane, lead and gold. I believe that the most important of Nigeria's untapped resource is the type of Emeagwali’s genius which lies grossly underdeveloped in millions of Nigerian children and even in ourselves.