Delays in issuance of mining licences slows sector’s growth

The Chairman of Goldmines Nigeria, Bello Yahaya, has identified delays in issuance of licences to perspective miners as a setback in tapping the sector’s full potential.

Yahaya told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Kaduna on Monday that the issuance of leases and licences were serious challenges investors would have to surmount to succeed.

“Many collect the leases and licences and keep them without allowing serious investors’ access to the rights, making many mining sites to remain unexploited,” Yahaya said.

“I have noticed that while the Federal Government is talking of industrialising the country, using the solid minerals, government is giving priority attention to most of the so-called foreign miners.

“I mean, government is not ready to encourage its indigenous miners; we are being labelled as local miners.

“Rather than giving mining licences to our local miners to encourage them, government prefers to give licences to foreign miners who mine these minerals and export them at will.

“If care is not taken, government is taking the country back to the colonial days when our mineral deposits and other agricultural raw materials were exploited and exported to Europe.’’

He said that there were no large scale mining in Nigeria today outside the limestone industry because investors perceived the policy and investment climate to be hostile to business.

He said that regulatory, technical institution, directorate, department and agency set up by the ministry were ineffective in service delivery due to insufficient tools, skill and funding.

He noted that Nigeria mining sector had challenges and could be solved if a clear plan was articulated by the government to address it within the right strategic framework.

Yahaya noted that the absence of bankable data covering quantity and quality of minerals, lack of cooperation between the states and Federal Government and poor publicity of the sector’s activities had continued to hinder its development.

He said: “Nigeria is blessed with diverse mineral and natural resources such that there is virtually no part of the country that one will go to without finding some compositions of the over 44 natural minerals.’’