Abuja, May 25, 2024 – The federal government has revoked 2,531 mining licences in the last one year due to non-payment of dues and inactivity.
Dele Alake, the Minister of Solid Minerals, disclosed this on Thursday at Ministerial Sectoral Updates on the achievements of President Bola Tinubu during his first year in office.
He said the ministry had introduced many reforms which had improved service delivery, investor confidence and revenue generation.
Alake said the Mining Cadastre Office (MCO) had been repositioned with the introduction of eMC+ software for mineral tittle application.
He expressed regret that the country failed to tap the enormous mineral resources in the country for many years when the country depended solely on income from the petroleum sector.
“In my own considered estimation, Nigeria over the decades failed woefully to efficiently utilise the revenue that accrued to us from the oil sector.
“And how did we fail to utilise that? We failed to utilise the humongous amount of petrodollars that came into the coffers of this country. We did not utilise this money to sufficiently create a very solid structural economy in other sectors.
“And one of the most critical sectors that we failed to address over the decades is the solid mineral sector and agriculture as well.
“In other climes, the monies derived from oil, the monies were used to develop other sectors of the economy such that as revenue flowed in from one, revenues were also flowing from these other critical sectors, but our story was not like that,” he said.
Alake, however, said since the Tinubu administration came into office, there had been changes with the introduction of the Renewed Hope Agenda, which contained a plan to diversify the economy.
“As we say in our own clime, the past is history, the future is a golden area that we are foretelling.
“So, therefore, since May 29 last year, on the resumption of our President, there has been a major plank of the Renewed Hope Agenda, which is contingent on the diversification of the economy, away from oil.
“And in any case, the reasons are not far-fetched, because the whole world is moving away gradually from oil because I’m sure you all know what is called global warming,” Alake
