Alake: FG Ready to Partner with Mining Engineers

Folalumi Alaran in Abuja

The Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Mr. Dele Alake, has assured indigenous mining engineers of the willingness of the current administration to partner with them to transform the solid minerals sector.

Praising them for their contribution to the development of the sector when the engineers paid him a courtesy visit, Alake said that all hands must be on deck to execute the roadmap for solid minerals development to benefit Nigerians.

He reiterated plans to invest in data on solid minerals to lower barrier to investors and leverage on satellite technology and surveillance task force to tackle the menace of illegal mining.

The minister noted that the solid minerals’ sector is the “survival kit” of the country. 

He urged mining engineers to bring forward new ideas to promote the implementation of the roadmap to achieve local content across the solid minerals value chain.

On the proposal of the mining engineers asking the government to rename the ministry, the minister said “it would amount to legal gymnastics that would require institutional calibration.”

 Presenting their address to the minister earlier, the president of the Nigerian Society of Mining Engineers (NSME), Professor Benson Shedrack Jatau, commended the Tinubu’s administration for splitting the old Ministry of Mines and Steel into the ministries of Steel and Solid Minerals.

However, the society advocated for the use of Ministry of Minerals Development, arguing that not all minerals are solid.

The NSME commended the campaign of the minister against illegal mining adding that it has defied all efforts.

His said: “For decades, illegal mining activities have thrived in the nation’s mining industry without much successful attempts to contain it. It is expected that this administration demonstrates the political will power to address the concern and effect appropriate regulatory controls and sanctions.”

The NSME advocated the implementation of the roadmap to reposition the solid minerals sector and invited the minister to its annual general meeting holding in Kaduna on October 10 to 13, this year,