Solid Minerals Minister, Dr. Oladele Alake has commended Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) for supporting the Tinubu administration in its agenda to transform the solid minerals sector into the country’s highest source of revenue.
During a business visit of AFC’s President/Chief Executive Officer, Mr Samaila Zubairu to his office in Abuja on Tuesday, Alake said that every effort made through policies initiatives and programmes to make Nigeria a destination for solid minerals would be futile if the nation did not improve on data gathering, adding that that explained the government’s passion to gather precise data on minerals.
He assured: ”We will invest heavily in data generation, concise and precise data generation that will empower and enable investors make informed decisions.
”The Ministry is committed to developing the necessary data needed to advance the $700 billion value under the ground under the big data strategy”.
Alake said that the present administration decided to shift attention from fossil fuel and its attendant climatic challenges to solid minerals as viable alternative. ”President Bola Ahmed Tinubu decided to create the ministry, empower it, and develop policies to make it advantageous to Nigerians”, he explained.
While acknowledging the robust partnership between AFC and Solid Minerals Development Fund aimed at identifying and supporting development -stage mining projects in Nigeria, the minister said that the visit of the CEO signposts how critical the mining sector is to Nigeria’s economic growth and prosperity.
He assured Zubairu that the Ministry would cooperate and collaborate with AFC to make its roadmap actionable in tandem with the transformation agenda launched recently by the Ministry to increase revenue accruable to the government amongst others.
Earlier, Zubairu said that the quantum and value of Nigeria’s solid minerals has made it imperative to develop a framework of collaborating with the Ministry for the growth of the sector.
He advocated the formulation of a framework that will support local investors by development banks, to de-risk investment in the mining sector with a positive implications on increasing tax earnings for the country.
The AFC boss pledged the corporation’s support for the BiG Data project, value added processing centres, reduction of insecurity and support for indigenous mining companies.
He disclosed that the AFC’s support for Segilola enabled it to prove that an indigenous company could succeed in the mining sector.
