*Photo: Mr Dele Ayanleke, President of Nigerian Miners Association*
By Shakirudeen Bankole
Stakeholders in the Nigerian former and informal sectors have lamented the inconsistency of government policy on the nation’s economic resuscitation and growth plan.
On Monday, at one of the sessions held during the opening day of the 2024 Mining Week in Abuja, experts lamented the impracticality of linking the booming Nigerian Mining Sector to the Manufacturing Sector, thereby falling in maximising the available opportunities therein to transform the country’s economy.
Mr Dele Ayanleke, President of Nigerian Miners Association, said until the mining sector is successfully linked with the manufacturing sector, and the linkage begins to bring about upward evaluation of the Nigerian mineral wealth and consolidation of the Industrialization agenda, nothing significant would be considered to have happened.
” I just came out from a close door roundtable meeting on how to link Mining and the Manufacturing sectors. In some other countries, government make policies to ensure that their mineral potentials is transformed into industrial revolution. We have not been seeing much of that in Nigeria. Most of our mineral wealth are being exported raw,” he said.
According to him, for the Mining sector to deliver on its reforms mandate, there must be deliberate attempt to create development along the value chain that can drive the industrial revolution agenda
“Otherwise,” he says, “the sector would still not deliver. Our sector would still be raped, our resources would still be taken away . Our youth would still not have employment,” he said.
Ayanleke also said the traditional problems that may further inhibit the growth plan for the Mining sector is the lack social amenities like stable electricity supply, good road network, and safety and security, among others.
“Of course these lack of social amenities are already hunting us in the sector. For instance, we are exporting our Lithium mineral raw to the international market now, we are wasting our coal, and our water resources that can be turned into hydro electric power are still not being utilized.
“That is why I said we need strong Political Will, if we actually!nwe want all the resources that God has endowed on this country to work for us.”
One of such strong political wills, he was admonishing, was the courage for the current government to enjoin or mandate the IoCs to adopt Nigeria’s Barites miners for their drilling activities instead of importing the same commodity that are richer and available locally.
“We have some mineral resources that are being used by the few manufacturing companies in Nigeria. One of them is Barites. In 2021, under the regime of the former Minister of Solid Mineral Development, Architect Adegbite, we went to Port Harcourt in Rivers State to launch the Nigerian Barites. This was because we have it on record that the Nigerian Barites is of better quality than the one that our oil and gas industry are importing for use.
“Barite is the drilling agent for the oil and gas extractivism work.. But the oil and gas companies are importing this mineral when we have it in abundance in Nigeria .Their argument was our Barites are not specified and stadardised.
“The former Minister, rode on the complaint to take the initiative of ensuring that the Nigeria Barites is standardised. But shockingly, it ended there. Since the launch of this standardisation in October 2021, we have not heard anything about it again.
“Let’s go back to the second Republic, our leaders then used these agro-allied resources to build industries and create jobs. Let’s do the same now. And even more,” he added.
