$750bn, Nigeria’s Solid Mineral Wealth Worth That Much, Says Alake
The Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake, on Monday, has disclosed that currently, Nigeria possesses a deposit of mineral products worth $750bn.
This was disclosed by the minister at a two-day national stakeholders’ roundtable on sustainable development of the mining industry organised by the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies with the theme ‘Sustainable Development of the Mining Industry in Nigeria’ in Abuja.
The summit, organised in partnership with Bruit Costaud was to brainstorm possible solutions to the issues faced in the mining sector.
While speaking, Alake said the mining sector has the potential to contribute a large part of the nation’s goal to achieve a trillion-dollar economy as pushed by the current administration.
However, he noted that the availability of data is important to attract investors that will establish plants in Nigeria to process the minerals and create a multiplier effect on job creation and economic growth.
According to Alake, “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 noted that the government Is putting in place concrete measures that would shift attention away from fossil fuels to solid minerals.
The Minister added that part of its reform was the establishment of the Nigerian Solid Minerals Corporation.
He further stated that the Committee on Solid Minerals Development had initiated the enactment of an act of the National Assembly on the Nigerian Solid Minerals Corporation, which would be a private sector-led limited liability company with a clear mandate of engaging in the business of mining across the entire value chain upstream to the downstream.
In his address, Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa State applauded the ongoing reforms and emphasised that private investment in solid minerals was crucial for driving growth in the sector.
The governor expressed that lithium is the new gold and that Nigeria has an abundance of it.
Sule declared that the biggest lithium processing factory would soon be inaugurated to process 4,000 metric tonnes a day and transport over a million tonnes of lithium a year.
The Director General of NIPSS, Ayo Omotayo, also expressed that the summit was organised to chart a way forward for the mining sector.
“We must do all we can to take our country to greater heights by ensuring that the critical mining sector contributes its share of a N1tn dollar economy in very few years ahead. The question is can we achieve the promise of a trillion-dollar economy if the mining sector performs optimally," he said.