Don't Miss


Home   >   Business   >   Industries   >   FG gives idle mining operators March 1 ultimatum

FG gives idle mining operators March 1 ultimatum

By on December 23, 2015

The Federal Government on Monday issued a March 1, 2016 ultimatum to operators in the mining industry to utilise their leases and licences or risk the revocation of such.

The Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, who issued the ultimatum at his maiden press conference in Abuja, also declared that the era of illegal mining was over.

He said, “We will work with stakeholders to review existing licences and bring them up to date where there are issues; our goal is to get the licensees who are sitting on the fence to have sufficient confidence to start investing real capital.

“That said, starting from March 1, 2016, we will start enforcing the ‘use it or lose it’ doctrine enshrined in the Nigerian Minerals Act, 2007. The period from today to 1st of March, 2016 should be considered as an amnesty period to allow for the regularisation of papers.”

Fayemi said the ministry was seeking an intervention fund for the solid minerals industry worth at least N5000bn from the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Describing the Ajaokuta Steel Company as a shame of the nation, the minister pledged the commitment of the Federal Government to fix the steel complex within the shortest time possible.

Fayemi said he had also started holding meetings with state governors to work around the constitutional limitation putting the exploitation of solid mineral resources on the exclusive list.

The minister said the insertion of mining and mineral resources in the 1999 Constitution as the exclusive preserve of the Federal Government had hindered the development of the sector.

He added that since getting a constitutional amendment to push mining into the concurrent legislative list had proved to be a herculean task, it would be better to work with state governments and other stakeholders in ventures that could accommodate their interests.

On the operators holding mining leases and licences that had yet to be utilised, Fayemi said they had up to the end of February to regularise their licences or risk their revocation from March 1.

The minister put the mining sector’s current contribution to the nation’s economy at N400bn or 0.34 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product, adding that while the contribution was significant, it did not reflect the true potential of the industry.

Fayemi listed factors limiting the contribution of the solid minerals sector to the GDP as limited infrastructure, insufficient geological data, limited cooperative federalism, low productivity, illegal artisanal mining and community challenges, weak institutional capacity, insufficient funding and perception issues.

He said, “Much of Nigeria’s mining is conducted informally at levels as high as 80 per cent of activity in some regions of the country, not necessarily of naira earnings.

“We need to bring these miners into a legalised framework, making them real start-up miners and ensuring that they pay government the right taxes and royalties. I want to be clear: there will no longer be a free lunch, as the Mining Act will be firmly enforced.”

He also said, “Funding has been a challenge partially because the sector has not been a focus for both the government and financial institutions. Over the past five years, for example, the total capital allocation to the ministry and its agencies in the federal budget has been less than N10bn.
[Punch]