Panic as incessant earth tremors hit Saki, Oyo State

By Ridwan AREMU

Residents of Saki in Oyo state have been thrown into panic in the last two weeks as continuous earth tremors rock their communities every day, TheNation reports

Director General, Nigerian Geological Survey Agency (NGSA), Dr. Abdulrazaq Garba, disclosed this.

Garba, who added that the tremors had become more consistent in the last few days, stated his agency had to dispatch a team to Saki last week to pacify residents who were worried about the incident.

The DG told newsmen in Abuja said he will be dispatching another team to Saki to assure them that the government is studying the situation while all the necessary government agencies will be informed of the situation.

His words: “We are currently having earth tremors in Saki, Oyo state. Earth tremors are natural phenomenon which we have no control over but what we are saying is this, we have put in some equipment in place but we need to densify the country.

“We have made applications to make sure we source for funding for more equipment. I believe that by the end of this year, we will get more equipment for measuring tremors, currently we have about six in place consistently monitoring tremors under the earth surface.

“We have one in Illorin and it is the one monitoring what is happening in Saki but it has been consistent in the last few days, I just gathered a team and will be sending them there, another team was there last week to pacify the community because they were worried because of the frequency so we had to go and assure them that we are studying the situation, all the necessary government agencies will be informed on the events happening in the area.

“But like we said, we need more of this equipment across the country to enable us have more information. Science is like statistics, the more information you have, the closer you are to getting the right data. For quite sometimes, we have not been capturing data on siesmic activities, which means we might not have enough information to make predictive analysis about how soon tremors will happen.”