Abubakar Akote, Minna
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has commissioned the Geological Research Centre at the Ibrahim Babangida University, Lapai, Niger State, named after its immediate past Group Managing Director, late Dr Maikanti Kachalla Baru to immortalise him.
The NNPC also commissioned a 10.27 km perimeter fence worth millions of naira at the university.
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Commissioning the projects it endowed to the university, the corporation’s Group Managing Director, Mallam Mele Kolo Kyari, who was represented by the Group Executive Director, Corporate Services, Aisha Farida Katagum, said the industry was confronted with difficulties in exploration and exploitation of energy resources, high rate of reserve depletion and limited human capital and local content production.
He said, “It is in view of these challenges that the NNPC entered into an agreement with the Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University to establish an endowment fund to enable strategic research into studies of source rock, reservoir rock of hydrocarbon traps, prospects and play generation and evaluation and volcanic and prospectivity of frontier sedimentary basins, application of technology for frontier of exploration and ultra-deep offshore depositional settings.”
Malam Kyari revealed that the projects, which were started by the late GMD, Maikanti Baru in 2019 were 100 per cent funded by the corporation and executed under the NNPC Professorial Chair Endowment for strategic research, targeted at providing innovative and robust solutions required for repositioning the industry for greater efficiency and effective service delivery.
He said the research centre would facilitate the training of students to be professionals in Geology.
Earlier, the vice chancellor of the university, Professor Abu Kasim Adamu, said the university was commissioned by the NNPC to carry out field mapping and geological studies of the Bida Basin in Niger State and Sokoto Basin, which was successfully completed in May, 2018, leading to the award of honorary professorial chair.
He said the late Baru assisted the institution to get NUC’s full accreditation for the Department of Geology and mounting of new postgraduate programmes up to PhD level in Geology and Mining during the 2020 NUC’s resource verification exercise, in addition to the construction of the perimeter fence.
Professor Kasim thanked Kyari for sustaining the legacies of his predecessor, especially the completion of the Geological Research Centre, and assured of continued engagements in oil and other mineral resources exploration for the good of the country.
