Foreign Investors Excited About Juicy Mining Prospects In Nigeria –Minister

Posted by African Examiner African News, Business News, Latest Headlines, News, Uncategorized Wednesday, March 17th, 2021

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – The Honourable Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Olamilekan Adegbite has disclosed that foreign investors are excited about the juicy mining prospects in Nigeria.

The minister said the Federal Government of Nigeria had discovered gold along the Abuja-Nasarawa axis through the National Integrated Mineral Exploration Project (NIMEP), programme undertaken by the ministry.

Adegbite added that the NIMEP project which had cost the ministry N15 billion had generated troves of geoscience data that had foreign investors excited about the juicy mining prospects in the country.

He made the disclosure during the courtesy visit of the Executive Governor of Nasarawa State, Engr. Abdullahi Sule to the ministry on Tuesday.

“It is a pleasure to receive the governor of Nasarawa State in my office today and this should not be a surprise because Nasarawa State is the home of solid minerals in the country”, he said

He assured the governor of the ministry’s intention to develop the mineral resources in the state, adding that they have had an earlier discussion about recent discoveries of precious minerals along the Nasarawa-Abuja axis.

“As you probably might be aware, we have been talking about this for a while, there is a programme we call NIMEP executed by the ministry were government has put about N15 billion into exploration for minerals, one of which is gold, and we have done this exploration over the country and have discovered a very nice track of gold deposits especially between Abuja and Nasarawa were we share borders”, he added.

The minister equally allayed the concerns of Nasarawa State Government about the menace of illegal gold mining snowballing in the state due to the large deposits of gold in the state.

Adegbite said the ministry was working with relevant security agencies to avert such an unwanted scenario happening.

“We know that gold mining attracts a lot of undesirables. Wherever this people smell gold, if I may use the word smell, whenever they have an inkling that there is gold, it somehow attracts these undesirable elements. It always follows that we have illegality developing around there. However, we are working hard to nip these in the bud.

“We don’t want banditry to come to Nasarawa and Abuja on the trail of gold as it has unfortunately happened in Zamfara”, he stressed.

He also added that the ministry had a special mines police that was saddled with curbing the menace of illegal mining in the country.

“We will be working with security agencies, possibly bringing in the military to make sure that we prevent such an occurrence of illegal mining in this axis of Nasarawa and the Federal Capital Territory. So I have been talking with the governor and we are going to involve security apparatus”, he further explained.