Dele Alake, the Minister of Solid Minerals Development
On Monday, Dele Alake, the Minister of Solid Minerals Development, revealed that Nigeria currently has a $750 billion mineral product deposit.
The National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies hosted a two-day national stakeholders’ roundtable on the topic of “Sustainable Development of the Mining Industry in Nigeria” in Abuja, where the minister made this revelation.
According to preliminary reports from German company GeoScan, the country is endowed with minerals valued at a conservative $750 billion. Alake stated that the government is striving to make sure the nation becomes a viable investment destination for solid minerals development.
The summit was held in collaboration with Bruit Costaud with the aim of generating ideas for potential resolutions to the problems encountered in the mining industry.
In his speech, Alake asserted that the mining industry might play a significant role in the country’s efforts to reach the present administration’s trillion-dollar economic target.
On the other hand, he asserted that the availability of data is crucial in luring investors who will set up units in Nigeria to process the minerals and have a cascade effect on employment generation and economic expansion.
Alake said, “We are working with the World Bank, Excalibur and GeoScan, a German company, to get the necessary data on the sector.
“That is why the federal government signed a memorandum of understanding with Geoscan and they did a preliminary survey of our minerals on the output and potential. They gave us a figure of $750bn worth of minerals embedded under the ground of Nigeria.
“That is a conservative estimate, by the time we conduct a serious, accurate data exploration, we will discover that we have trillions of solid minerals embedded under. So, the president’s projection of a one-dollar economy is not a fluke.
“By the time we are done with all of these efforts, input and policies we are putting in place, trillions of naira will be a child’s play and we will be nudging trillions of dollars.”
The minister claims that the administration is implementing practical steps to refocus attention on solid minerals rather than fossil fuels.
While acknowledging the current reforms aimed at revitalizing the industry, Alake emphasized the need to stop Nigeria from continuing to be a “pit-to-port” exporter of solid minerals, with the outsourcing of processing and conversion activities to other nations.
Additionally, he stated that going forward, communities in which solid minerals are exploited must reap the most benefits from solid mineral discovery. The Minister went on to say that the Nigerian Solid Minerals Corporation was established as a part of the reform.
He revealed that the Nigerian Solid Minerals Corporation would be a limited liability company led by the private sector with the explicit purpose of conducting mining operations along the whole value chain, from upstream to downstream.
The Committee on Solid Minerals Development had started the process of having the National Assembly enact an act on the corporation. According to him, the company was anticipated to catalyze investment inflow throughout the entire sector and provide some of the necessary stability for the industry.