Francis Kadiri
The immediate past Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Dr. Bawa Bwari has assured industrialists that job-revolution policies of the Buhari administration in the mining sector was designed to make Nigeria self-sufficient in the production of construction materials and other industrial materials such that the country will have comparative advantage as a result of its world class deposits.
The former minister who made the disclosure in an exclusive chat with our correspondent in Abuja, recalled the challenges inherited by the Buhari administration in the mining sector while also discussing modest achievements of the Buhari administration in the mining sector, which began in November
2015.
“Some of the challenges we inherited include insufficient funding, weak institutional capacity of the supervising ministry, limited supporting infrastructure, limited cooperative federalism in sector governance and low productivity.
He said other inherited challenges include illegal mining activities, community challenges, protracted litigation on legacy assets, and weak ease of doing
business.
Bwari explained that the administration was able to address the challenges, stating that the revenue generated from the mining sector and its contribution to national GDP has significantly increased. “The mining sector is beginning to play a viable role in jobs creation through sustainable mining practices,”
Discussing how it achieved the set goal, he said: “Through a robust process of consultation with stakeholders, we were able to produce a Roadmap for the sector that was approved by the Federal Executive Council on August 31, 2016,”adding that the Roadmap provides strategic direction for addressing the challenges through initiatives that will last from 2015 –
2025.
The former minister said in less than four years, government recorded some major achievements, including plugging revenue leakages, increasing sector funding, producing more accurate geo-science data through world class exploration projects, improving job opportunities in the sector while developing the downstream sector, and regulating the sector effectively to make sure standard practices are adhered to.
“In addressing the lack of geological data, we were able to pay off and collect the results of the aeromagnetic survey of the country done ten years earlier but not released due to non-payment.
“We also initiated a fifteen billion naira National Integrated Mining Exploration Project which has already discovered new findings,” adding that after the conclusion of the project, the areas of new anomalies will be sold to investors who will bring in foreign direct investment to increase the revenue coming into the economy.
“In the last few years, we have succeeded in attracting junior mining companies into the sector and they are doing quite well in increasing the investment portfolios of the country. Already, there are about fifty of these companies doing formal mining in various parts of the country.
“Some of these include the Australian company, Symbol Mining Limited which is currently exporting zinc from its open pit mine in Bauchi where the ore is confirmed tobe twenty-two as compared to the global average of six
percent.
Bwari who recalled that one of the legacy challenges that militated against the development of the sector was the lack of funds to embark on capital intensive mining, said the administration has been able to get Stanbic IBTC Bank to provide $600 million as funding for an integrated iron and steel plant being built in Kagarko, Kaduna State by African Natural Resources and Mines Limited. He said the project will have a capacity of 5.4 metric tonnes per annum and generate three thousand, five hundred direct
jobs.
He further explained that in order to ensure backward integration and reduce the importation of mineral raw materials, the administration developed a road map for industrial minerals.
