Nigeria’s minister of solid minerals development, Dr. Oladele Alake on Monday disclosed that the country had a solid mineral wealth worth in excess of $750bn, according to a survey report by a German firm, GeoScan.

He, however, hinted that Nigeria was likely to have much more than the figure when the reports of other surveys from other reputable global firms are received.

The minister made this comment at a two-day Stakeholders’ Roundtable on Solid Minerals Development jointly organised by the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) and Bruit Costaud in Abuja Monday Nigeria.

Alake said the mining sector had the potential to contribute a large chunk of the wealth necessary to turn Nigeria into a trillion-dollar economy which is a major goal of the Tinubu administration.

He stated that the availability of data is important to attract investors to Nigeria as it would help them make informed investment decisions, adding that bringing them to site their processing plants in Nigerian will have the multiplier effect of job and wealth creation for the citizens on the one hand and the growth of the country’s economy.

“We are working with the World Bank, Excalibur and GeoScan, a German company, to get the necessary data on the sector. That is why the federal government signed a memorandum of understanding with Geoscan and they did a preliminary survey of our minerals on the output and potential. They gave us a figure of $750 billion worth of minerals embedded under the ground of Nigeria.” 

“That is a conservative estimate, by the time we conduct a serious, accurate data exploration, we will discover that we have trillions of solid minerals embedded under. So, the president’s projection of a one-dollar economy is not a fluke. By the time we are done with all of these efforts, input and policies we are putting in place, trillions of naira will be a child’s play and we will be nudging trillions of dollars.” 

Alake further stated that the president has given the ministry the mandate to re-organise the sector from exploration to production and processing with the ultimate objective of making it a key contributor to the national economy.

“Nigeria is prime to become the new global mining destination and together we will make this vision a reality,” he said, adding that as the foremost government think-tank, the stakeholders’ roundtable will enrich NIPSS’ analysis of the sector and the recommendations from the summit will no doubt point to the steps to be taken to enable the sector deliver on its mandate.

He reiterated his resolute stance on local value addition in products mined in the country and highlighted that through his advocacy and leadership of African ministers of solid minerals, all the other African countries had adopted the same policy of value addition.

The minister added that part of his seven-point agenda of reform is the formation of a mining police, which has been launched and already arresting illegal operators across Nigeria, and the establishment of the Nigerian Solid Minerals Corporation.

“When I first said this, a lot of people were taken aback and sceptical because what rang in their mind was NNPC, that is, we are going to establish something similar like NNPC, which is a quasi-government venture. But no, the proposed corporation is vastly different in nomenclature, structure and operation,” he said, assuring that it will be private sector-led.

“We are proposing 50 per cent of the equity entirely to the private sector, 25 per cent to Nigerians in general and 25 per cent to the government,” he explained.

On his part, the governor of Nasarawa State, Abullali Sule, said that lithium is the new gold and that Nigeria has it in great abundance.

He further stated that his administration had set up the biggest lithium processing factory in Nigeria and that it will soon be processing 4,000 metric tonnes a day and transporting over a million tonnes of lithium a year.

NIPSS director-general of NIPSS, Ayo Omotaya, in his speech said the summit was organised to bring together the various stakeholders in order to propose solutions to challenges confronting the mining industry.

In an earlier interaction with journalists, he gave assurance that the two-day event will not be just another academic exercise but that decisions reached will be useful to the cause of turning the mining sector into Nigeria’s major earner in the near future.