At the moment, Nigeria has a mono-product economy with over 90% of government revenue coming from crude oil and gas and with a downturn in the sector, the need to find alternative sources of income has become urgent. Global oil prices have fallen to just over $40 a barrel from over $100 a barrel this time last year, hitting government revenue hard and pushing the economy into recession.
Yesterday, solid minerals minister Dr Kayode Fayemi, announced a new road map for the sector. He added that this new plan would lead to job creation in the mining industry and would also contribute 5% of Nigeria's GDP over the next 10 years.
Dr Fayemi said: "What the roadmap seeks to do is to grow the contribution of mining to GDP on the back of the president’s vision to diversify the economy. What distinguishes this roadmap is its determination to build an independent regulatory agency in the mining sector as stakeholders have been insisting that the ministry should not also be the regulator of the industry.
“We will now have mining zonal offices which will issue licenses together with the mining inspecting directorate, a mining environment compliance unit as well as neutical mining units. These directorates will be within the ministry but will form part of the independent regulatory agency."
He added that the new roadmap also addressed the critical issue of partnership with states, pointing out that the federal government will own the minerals but the state governments will own the land. Dr Fayemi said mining had not been thriving in Nigeria because of the tension between the federal government and the states, so to address this problem, mining cadastrail and zonal offices would also be created in the states.
“In line with global standard, the roadmap is also to change the name of the ministry from the Ministry of Solid Mineral Development to the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development, which is what obtains across the board. Another focus is to ensure that value addition is gradually being invested to and reduce the manner in which raw minerals are exported from Nigeria.
"It is to emphasise beneficiation and processing, so that what we produce is also improved upon before we embark on exportation and we also want to ensure it is utilised here. We have granite, marble and bitumen yet we import the bulk of those products into Nigeria because processing does not take place here," Dr Fayemi added.
He explained that the roadmap would also make it easier for foreign direct investment co come into the country and that government would also improve on geo-science data gathering. He said government recognised the fact that mining was about science and required a lot of research and had therefore agreed that a lot of money be put into exploration.
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