For geoscientists
Your registration says you are competent. Your record should say what you have done.
NMGS-registered geologists, geophysicists and geochemists are found by word of mouth and paid on a handshake, and the reports they sign travel without them. Publish what you are registered for, be engaged on named work, and keep every finding in a record neither party can quietly alter.
What the work looks like now
None of this is about geology. It is about everything around the geology — who finds you, what happens to your report, and what you can point at when somebody disagrees.
You are found by word of mouth, or not at all
Work reaches a registered geoscientist through somebody who already knows them. That is a small circle — and it is not where the ground is. Two in five active mineral titles sit in Nasarawa, Niger, Kogi, Kwara, Kaduna, Bauchi and Plateau; the register puts most professionals in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt, which between them hold about one title in twenty.
A profile on Nelum states what you are registered for and what you have signed, and it is visible to every verified company on the platform — the holders of 10,125 active titles among them.
Your report leaves your hands and you lose sight of it
A resource estimate emailed as a PDF can be edited, re-dated, extracted from, and quoted at a financier by somebody who was not on the engagement. You find out, if you find out, when your name is attached to a number you did not write.
Work filed against an order carries its version and its author. A later revision does not overwrite the earlier one; both remain, and it is visible which was relied on.
Being asked to do the work and to verify it
The same client that wants a survey often wants the assay too, and taking both is how a professional ends up certifying their own advice.
Nelum will not let one company hold both roles on the same order. That is not a courtesy to you — it is the reason a buyer trusts the report at all.
Getting paid for a scope that kept moving
A verbal brief becomes a longer job, and the argument at the end is about what was agreed at the start, with nothing to point at.
An engagement records what was asked for, by whom, when it was accepted, and when the result was filed. Both sides confirm it is finished.
What you can be engaged for
Each of these is a distinct engagement on an order, with its own scope, its own acceptance, and its own filed result.
Geological survey & mapping
Field mapping, structural interpretation and target generation over a licence area.
Geochemical sampling programme
Designing and supervising soil, stream-sediment and rock-chip sampling, including the QA-QC protocol — the part that decides whether anyone downstream can rely on the numbers.
Geophysical survey
Magnetic, radiometric, IP or EM survey, and the interpretation that makes it mean something.
Resource & reserve estimation
Mineral resource and ore reserve estimation to a recognised code, with the assumptions stated rather than buried.
Competent Person's Report
An independent CPR on a project or licence. Engaged mutually — the party relying on it agrees who signs it, which is what makes your signature worth something.
Technical due diligence & reserve audit
Independent review of another party's geology, workings or production claims, and audit of a declared resource against the code it claims to follow.
How verification works for a practice
We check what a regulator has already established, rather than asking you to prove your competence to a marketplace.
- Your NMGS number is the anchor
- The Nigerian Mining and Geosciences Society has already checked your qualifications and standing before issuing your number, and the Ministry publishes the register. We check against that rather than asking you to prove your competence again from scratch. A COMEG registration does the same job — bring whichever you hold.
- The registration belongs to you, not the practice
- The register lists people, not firms. A sole practitioner registers their practice on Nelum, and the credential stays attached to the individual who signs — so a report always traces to a named registered professional, not to a logo.
- You do not buy or sell here
- A geoscience practice cannot take a buy or sell capability on Nelum. It is refused by the platform, not discouraged by policy: a firm that advises on a deposit and also trades the material out of it has an interest in the number it reports.
- Accept or decline, always
- Nobody is conscripted onto a job. Every engagement is offered and you take it or refuse it — for capacity, for a conflict, or because it is outside what you are registered to do.
Practical questions
- I am one person, not a firm. Can I register?
- Yes. Register your practice — a sole practice is a company for this purpose. Your NMGS registration stays attached to you as the professional who signs, so nothing about a one-person practice weakens the report.
- Can I offer assay as well?
- Not alongside advisory work on the same material. Independent testing only means something when the laboratory has no interest in the result, and the same is true of a report. The platform refuses the combination rather than leaving it to judgement.
- Who sees my report?
- The parties to the order it was filed against, and nobody else. It is not published, not indexed, and not visible to companies browsing the marketplace.
- What if my client disputes the finding?
- The record shows what was asked, what was filed, when, and by whom. A disagreement about a conclusion is a disagreement about the conclusion — not an argument about what was actually delivered.
- What does it cost?
- Nelum charges a company subscription for the paid tiers and never a percentage of your fee — we are not a party to your engagement. Verification, the document record and the audit trail are on the free tier too.
- I work outside Nigeria.
- The platform is not Nigeria-only, but the NMGS and COMEG registers are, and they are the credentials we can verify today. If you are registered elsewhere, tell us which body and we will say honestly whether we can check it yet.
Register your practice
Verification is free and done once. Publish what you are registered for, and let the companies that need it find you by what you can do rather than by who they already know.