By ABAH SUNDAY, Abuja
The budget proposal by the Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dr Dele Alake, has been described as a necessity in the face of the huge geo-data gap in Nigeria’s vast solid mineral rich geographical space.
Debunking a recent media publication titled, “Tinubu’s Minister submits the N200 billion budget for the project already existing”, the Special Adviser to the Minister on Media and Public Relations, Kehinde Bamigbetan, in a statement noted that the author wrote the article in ignorance of the vast geo-data gap that needs to be filled to further derisk the sector.
He explained that the Minister’s budget proposal, tagged NIMEP 2, was conceived by the Nigerian Geological Survey Agency (NGSA) to explore identified mineralised corridors, gather more data on government-owned licences, explore targeting methods for specific minerals and develop local exploration expertise.
According to him, the first phase of the project only took care of five minerals out of the already identified forty-four (44).
“The data centre we have established must have accurate and comprehensive data to cater to investors seeking to mine over 44 minerals. If it doesn’t, investors won’t take Nigeria seriously. If the government is able to make the data available at the data centre, it will de-risk investment and enable them to venture into actual extraction and processing.
“However, the data in the facility is grossly inadequate, hence the need for ambitious and aggressive data gathering to fill the gap. This challenge was identified by the previous administration. It led to the implementation of the National Integrated Mineral Exploration Project. Due to funding constraints (NIMEP) explored only five out of Nigeria’s 44 minerals and was restricted to specific regions of estimated occurrences.
“These were Gold with Nickel and PGM; Pegmatite minerals (Tantalum, Niobium, Tin and Lithium); Lead, Zinc and Silver; Baryte and Iron ore.
“Compare this with Sierra Leone which, between 2018 and 2022 spent $7.8 million to execute a nationwide Airborne Geophysiscal Survey of its 71,740 square kilometres enabling her to develop data sets on the occurrences and reserves of all key minerals.
“With Nigeria’s land space of 923,768 square kilometres, more than 12 times the size of Sierra Leone, the cost of a similar Airborne Survey will exceed the N200 billion budget proposed – which is not even available,” he said.
According to him, Nigeria’s low investment in solid minerals exploration is an international embarrassment, and the current administration is determined to reverse the stigma.
Speaking further, he said, “According to Standard & Poor ‘s survey on exploration budgets of countries in Africa, Nigeria spent the least, only $2.5 million dollars on exploration in 2023 compared to Ivory Coast’s $ 147 million. The figures for a few other countries are DR Congo, $ 133 million, South Africa, $ 117 million, Ghana, 99.7 million, and Mali. $ 83 million are instructive.”
