Federal Republic of Nigeria National Report on the Implementation of the Code of Conduct on Safety and Security of Radioactive Sources and its Supplementary Guidance on the Import and Export of Radioactive Sources

Radioactive sources are widely used in different sectors of the Nigerian economy including the petroleum industry, the health sector, mining industry, manufacturing industry, metallurgical industry, ship building, construction industry, agriculture and water resources, security operations and in education and research. All the radioactive sources involved are imported mainly from the Group of Eight States and recently from South Africa, China and South Korea. The petroleum industry is the largest importer and user of radioactive sources in Nigeria and thousands of radioactive sources are used for various applications in practices which include nuclear well-logging, industrial radiography, nuclear gauging, radio-tracing, etc. The Nigerian oil and gas industry is over fifty years old, which implies that radioactive sources have been imported into the country for more than fifty years without any form of regulatory control prior to the establishment of the NNRA. The Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection Act of 1995 provides for the establishment of the Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NNRA). The NNRA has the responsibility for nuclear safety and radiological protection regulation in the country. To achieve this objective, the Act empowers the NNRA to, amongst other, categorize and license activities involving exposure to ionizing radiation, in particular, the possession, production, processing, manufacture, purchase, sale, import, export, handling, use, transformation, transfer, trading, assignment, transport, storage and disposal of any radioactive material, nuclear material, radioactive waste, prescribed substance and any apparatus emitting ionizing radiation