Kayode Fayemi: Minister, Mines and Steel Development

The Ministry of Mines and Steel Development has identified five key areas militating against the growth of Nigeria’s mining sector.

This was reported by the Ministry’s Roadmap made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Abuja.

It said that these key areas had made the minerals and mining sector underperformed since 1970.

It said that initially, the ministry was underperforming as a result of poor policy choices, which subsequently became compounded by deterioration of the fiscal regime, infrastructure and shortage of investment in quality geosciences data.

The report indicated that these geosciences challenge would continue to constrain investment decision-making which included data collection at the appropriate level of accuracy and its timely dissemination to national and international investors.

It said in recent years, Nigeria completed a Higher Resolution Airborne Geophysical Survey involving magnetic radiometric and limited electromagnetic survey aimed at assisting and promoting mineral exploration.

The report said while this was an important start, it remained insufficient for initiating and building investors confidence in the mining industry.

“The Nigerian Geological Survey Agency (NGSA) has begun to collect and evaluate sizeable amounts of information on the location and quality of available minerals, but much of this remains unknown to the sector,” it said.

It indicated that there was no large-scale miners in operation in Nigeria today outside the limestone industry, as investors perceived policy and investment climate to be hostile to business and lack of required infrastructure.

The report, however, said that regulatory, technical institution, directorate, department and agency set up by the ministry had long suffered from ineffectiveness in service delivery due to insufficient tools, skill and funding.

It indicated that Nigeria mining sector still faced a range of important challenges.

“However, these can be solved if a clear plan is articulated and the challenges are addressed within the right strategic framework.

(NAN)