Less than 1000 mining permits active out of over 7000 issued-MCO

Obadiah Simon Nkom, the director general of the Mining Cadastre Office, MCO, has revealed that of the over 7000 mining leases/licenses issued by the agency, less than 1000 of them are active, giving room to illegal mining to operate.

He further informed that to curb the proliferation of such activities, the agency had  revoked 1,535 licenses due to non-payments of Annual Service Fees and 812 were revoked due to dormancy as recommended by the Mines Inspectorate Department (MID)

The director general made the revelation when he received a delegation of the House Committee on Solid Minerals, led by its chairman, Jonathan Gaza Gbefwi, in Abuja today, Tuesday, November 12, 2024

According to Simon Nkom “As parts of efforts to ensure effective and transparent service delivery, the MCO has partnered and is engaged in information sharing with various agencies of government including the Nigeria Police Force, NPF, the Nigeria Geological Survey Agency, NGSA, the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI, and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission among others.

He added that the agency had come up, with guidelines for anti-money laundering to ensure the issue of tying mining to money laundering is checked. Now the MCO checks all documents and the EFCC confirms all documents to ensure transparency. And politically exposed persons who wish to acquire licenses must declare to ensure transparency.

“We should not be having 7000 licenses with less than 1000 active this clearly shows that we need to allow the system to grow. We work in line with the provisions of Nigeria’s mineral and mining activities, we issue licenses, including, Reconnaissance permit, Exploration licenses, Small Scale Mining Licenses, Quarry and Mining leases as well as Water Permits while other departments of the ministry are charged with the responsibility of activities, royalties exports among others.

Nkom informed that the agency generates revenue through various forms including applications, procession, and annual service fee charges and also operates various policies such as the “USE IT OR LOSE IT” policy.

The director general disclosed an overview of the agency’s recent revenue performance as 2019: ₦2,379,500,315; 2020: ₦2,562,037,622; 2021: ₦4,301,178,122; 2022: ₦3,793,679,643; 2023: ₦6,071,263,461; October 2024: ₦8,199,976,300, adding that as at November 2024, the agency had surpassed the agency’s 2023 revenue performance.

Giving a summary of the appropriation, the DG said a total sum of N1,060,816,170.00 was broken into personnel N277,411,080.00, OVERHEAD N273,303,5671.00, TOTAL RECURRENT, N550,714,641.00 and CAPITAL N510,101,529.00.

In his response, Jonathan Gaza Gbefwi, Karu/Keffi/Kokona Federal Constituency and the chairman, of the House Committee on Solid Minerals, led its chairman, described the appropriation of over a billion naira to the agency as an aberration.

“For an agency in this ecosystem to be getting an appropriation of N1bn and by Oct getting N8b is an aberration. You need to be proactive and not wait for annual returns. With better equipment and management of licenses you can get more” he said

While promising to make a case for the MCO to be adequately provided for, he said “When you have an agency with such sensitive issues and not properly incentivized, you could have sharp practices and to discourage such sharp practices it is necessary staff and environment are well incentivized.

The chairman, however, lamented the issue of ‘consent’ while calling on the agency to commence a consent review.

“As a committee, we have been bombarded with complaints with regard to the issue of consent. Look to see how you can review aspects of consent. Consent is not well managed and if not well managed can lead to breakdown of law and order and sharp practices within your staff”.

He charged the MCO to have at least two staff in every state to verify the authenticity of consent issues. “There should be an officer in every state with a relationship with the sub-nationals and MIREMCO to confirm all consents. They can also have a network so that issues of consents and overlapping interests are reduced or voided”

The chairman who described the number of illegal miners as mind-boggling considering the number of licenses issued stressed the need to incentivize the environment assuring of the House’s intention to carry out oversight functions across all the agencies’ Zonal offices by 2025.