Governor Abdullahi Audu Sule, an engineer by profession, is on his final lap in office as the Chief Executive Officer of Nasarawa State. In this exclusive with LEO SOBECHI, he explains how the state was able to escape the insecurity that usually trail mining activities. “We insist that big time miners must process their products in the state,” he stated, stressing that the Federal Government deserves credit for putting in place legislations that ensure host community involvement in the exploitation and exploration of rare-earth mineral.

At the beginning, you held a lot of summits trying to market Nasarawa State. As of today, with increasing emphasis on energy transition and sustainability, how do you feel?
Well, I feel great; I feel satisfied; I feel fulfilled. I’m happy with the way things are going. But just to correct the impression, when you say we had so many summits, we had only three in totality. We had our very first summit, which we termed Diamond in the Rough. And that’s the one I believe you are talking about.
   
It was a summit to discover Nasarawa State, because at the time, the state was being seen only as a civil service state; as if we had no resources, we had no competencies, we had no capacities. So, that’s why we called it Diamond in the Rough. Come and discover this diamond, so we’ll be able to bring it out and wash it. That was in 2022.
  
By 2024, two years later, we had the next summit, which is Industrial Renaissance. Now that we have entered into all the MOUs, let us practicalise all these MOUs; let us make sure that they are working. I recall that we had the last one in the month of May.
   
And that one was actually talking about four steps, sustainability. What that means is to ensure that everything we have done so far could be sustained. So, in totality, we have only three summits. And the three summits, each one of them is significant in its own right. And if you ask me, I would say we have done the best we could. And I’m happy and I’m satisfied.

With this new emphasis on the environmental sustainability, especially with the ongoing London Climate Action Week (LCAW) holding in London, where focus is trained on energy transition and demand for lithium and other solid minerals are increasing; how do you feel as the leader of a state that is strategically located and endowed with a lot of minerals buried underground?

Well, first and foremost, London has always been the centre for this kind of event, because London has been the one on the issue of climate change. London has been at the centre on the issue of new sources of energy, especially clean energy. Therefore, it is in order that this is being held in London again.
  
I attended only one of them, in the years when I was in African Petroleum at the Canary Wharf in London. And it’s also the same thing; that time, it was more about carbon credit, what and what do you do as an oil company? Because I was the managing director of one of the oil companies in Nigeria at that time, so we were examining what to do in order to achieve successes in that area. 
   
So, I’m happy that you say, how do we feel now, considering the new sources of energy and Nasarawa State being so lucky that it is sitting on, at least, the seven critical minerals that are highly sought, not only in Nigeria, but worldwide. And I’m happy you mentioned one of them, which happens to be lithium. And Nasarawa also has taken the lead when it comes to that.
  
So, I feel happy and I’m sure most of the companies that have already invested in Nasarawa in the area of lithium processing, lithium mining, lithium exploration, lithium exploitation, are also going to be part of this summit, because they look forward to situations like that to see how they can improve.
  
I’m also very sure that I’m going to hear more from them by the time the summit is concluded. So, I feel happy also that the world is taking this area of new energy seriously, because the world has already been polluted by so much of the carbon concerns that we have. I think it’s in a very good hand and I think it is going in the right direction.

Now, assuming you are to market Nasarawa afresh based on background knowledge of what exists here, what specific things will you put out to the world?
I will tell them one; we have a state with great potential, just like I said in Lagos. We have a state actually that is very lucky among so many states that almost 90 per cent of the state, unlike so many states actually that have very sandy area and the rest of that, now nearly 90 per cent of Nasarawa State is available for agriculture.
   
You can actually go and plant yam this year, cassava the next year, rice the next year and the rest of that, and they will all give you very good yield. So, that’s one huge advantage Nasarawa State has that so many states don’t have.
  
Secondly, the amount of minerals present in the state. I just told you that we are lucky we have all the seven critical metals in Nasarawa State and only two of them are not in commercial quantity. So, there is great potential for those who are interested in mining. I will tell them that Nasarawa State has the best proximity to the federal capital, so the opportunities for real estate development are huge and they are there. The opportunities are huge for investment in the area of logistics, transportation, and they are available. Those are the kinds of things that I can say.

Has the state government taken a geo-mapping of strategic location of different minerals in the state?
We have done more than just taking a map. A thorough exploration has been done and this one is not only for Nasarawa State. To be fair to the Federal Ministry of Solid Minerals, they have done a complete survey of the entire Nigeria. And they already know which minerals are sited at every location.
  
Now for the part of Nasarawa, we have gone deeper to know that if a certain mineral is found, is it in commercial quantity? This is because if it is not in commercial quantity, it may not be attractive to some investors.
  
So, we have taken that step to go further in that direction, because most of these sites where the minerals are, some people already obtained licences from the Ministry of Solid Minerals. What we do, therefore, is to ensure, one, the kind of licence that is being obtained, whether it’s just exploration or it’s mining licence. And then, from there, we carry out further checks to know the quantity of whatever mineral is found. Unless we do that, we will not be able to attract investment. That’s why I said we have taken the steps beyond getting a map. We have taken the step of survey. We have also taken the step of a total exploration to ensure whether the material we have is in commercial quantity.

One other observation is that these rare-earth minerals breed insecurity wherever they exist, like a chicken and egg. To what extent has this insecurity obviated your vision or direction about the expropriation or appropriation of these minerals?
I think, first, is the fact that the reason it’s bringing insecurity is because on one hand, we are lucky that most of our minerals are what is called surface minerals. Any minerals that you don’t have to go more than 10 metres to actually mine and bring out, is usually called like surface minerals.
  
Good examples of them are the gemstones that we have; cobalt, aquamarine, and the rest of that here in Nasarawa State. So, that’s the reason you have this type of insecurity. But one of the biggest reasons for the insecurity is the fact that when you do not have a major owner of the site, it becomes more like free for all. Then you have the insecurity, because everybody is just coming to see what they can get.
  
Besides, in situations like that, you don’t know what kind of people you are going to have. As such, insecurity arises because people are fighting on and for the sites. That’s what led into so many crises of insecurity, so many other sites.

The second part is a lot of investors will not go in if there are no infrastructures in the area. So, what we do in our own case is to ensure that some of these places that we have solid minerals or certain minerals in commercial quantity, we try to construct at least a major road to that area.
  
So, it will help to ensure that the investors will be happy to go there. Security also will have access to the area in case of any problem. We have encouraged partnerships between the communities and the investors, with the state government coming in as well.
  
How did we do that? We came out actually with a law. We started with an Executive Order, but now it is a law, which stipulates that when you are mining in commercial quantity, you must also process in Nasarawa State. So, that birthed the marriage that we are seeing between the communities and the investors. Actually, investors even want communities’ participation, because the biggest security they have is when the communities take ownership of the site.

Once the communities believe that the project is theirs, then automatically you have some level of security of the investment. That’s what we have done in our own case.

To follow-up on that, recalling what happened in the Niger Delta, has there been any concerted effort to train some of these artisanal or small-holder miners?
It is not artisanal miners that we are training. But for Niger Delta, you have asked the right question, because my background is oil and gas, and my background is actually E&P (Exploration and Production). So that’s where Niger Delta comes in. And in fact, I was in Niger Delta because I worked for one of the companies at Onne in Port Harcourt, where we had our site, and then we have our plant at Trans-Amadi. Then, I was living at the Amadi flats in that area.
  
That gave me the opportunity to understand what you are saying concerning the Niger Delta crisis, which we avoided this time around. That’s why we said that it has to be different. For instance, in the Niger Delta, in the early 1960s, the entire Nigeria was one oil block and it was given to one oil company called Shell. Shell had the right to just go anywhere, explore, sometimes without the consent of the communities. And those are the kinds of things that resulted in militancy and Nigeria took correction from that.
  
As far as solid minerals are concerned, you cannot even get the licence until you have the consent of the community. That is one. So, it’s not Nasarawa State, but Nigeria, took that decision, and the credit goes to Nigeria, the Federal Government, for coming up with that.

But in Nasarawa State, because of the Land Use Act, since you can’t go to the mineral sites without going through the land, and the land belongs to the state, we now brought in the state, thereby making a tripartite.
  
Insofar as you have a relationship with the communities, you must also have a relationship with the state. That way, everybody stands on the same page, when it comes to that. So, I think that’s one of the things we have done to ensure that the triggers of Niger Delta crisis are avoided. That is on one side.
   
Coming back to your specific question on how do the communities benefit? I think that’s your question, because that’s why you are saying, are we training the small-scale miners?
Small-scale miners operate at a different horizon. It is not the same as a big investor that is coming on site, carrying out his exploration, exploitation and the actual mining. It’s quite different for a small-scale miner. Some of them are even illegal miners, so you cannot compare the two. What the big investors do is that when they come, we enter into an agreement with them on employing the local community and training the local community.
 
So, I always tell people that my biggest joy is not necessarily about employing the local communities or doing CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) for them, building clinics, building schools, giving them solar light or this and that. It’s not my biggest satisfaction. My biggest joy comes as a result of the people they train in the technical areas; those who did not know how to operate a small panel, and now can go and operate the panel, because they have been trained to do that.  

A good example is a company called Gafen. They have a plant in Shagamu and what they do is, take 50 of our youths from Nasarawa State, from the communities where they operate, to train them first while they were mining.
   
So, by the time they build their own factory, these young trainees have now mastered how to operate the machines, how to maintain the machines, how to do other things. And for that reason, they come in and become part and parcel of the system. That is my biggest source of joy. Of course, I’m happy that they have had some source of income and they have been employed. But my biggest joy, honestly speaking, is not just in that; it’s on the fact that they are now skilled workers and they can live here or go somewhere else and get a job.
   
And we also have a Wing Commander Abdullah Ibrahim Vocational and Technical Skill Acquisition Centre. Sometimes, we give them preliminary courses, so that at least they have ideas.  To some of them, when you say machines, in reality, they don’t know what machine is.

They believe very strongly that only a motorcycle is machine, a vehicle is just machine. But machines are more than that. So, they get such basic enlightenment and training here, so that when they come face to face with a machine, they are no longer scared, because they are operating those kinds of machines.

To what extent has this emphasis on solid minerals impacted on agriculture and food production, knowing that Nasarawa has great potential for food production?
Positive and negative. The positive sides are the ones that I’ve just listed to you. In some communities where these minerals are found, in most cases, they are also agricultural communities. But the people now see mining as easier, as the low-hanging fruit that they can make money faster from, than to go into agriculture where if you have to cultivate the land, you have to plant, you have to weed and wait.
  
Of course, when you finish producing the rice or the corn or cassava or yam, you don’t know whether you will make money or not. This one is just mineral on the ground; you can just go dig, open, bring out and sell. So, that’s where the positive and the negative angles that I said come in. This is like easy money as far as some of those people are concerned and the other is hard work.
  
So, the negative part is that we may be losing potential farmers that are there in the communities. But the positive part is that we are also gaining skilled people who can go somewhere, acquire more sophisticated jobs, more technical jobs, and be able to come back and make better income.
  
Now, the other impact is about the land. By the time you go and carry out a major mining activity, agriculture will not take place there again. That again is another negative aspect. Why did we say that anybody who is mining in Nasarawa State must also process in Nasarawa State? One of the main reasons, actually, is about reclamation of the land. It’s not that we are trying just to be wicked. The purity of most of the land, let us take the lithium you mentioned, most of lithium purity is ranging with less than 10 per cent, anywhere between seven to 10 percent.
   
In layman’s language what it means is that if you take 100 trucks or 100 tippers of lithium, only 10 is really what the investor wants. The remaining 90 per cent is just sand. So, if you are doing your processing at the same site, you can use these 90 trucks that you don’t need and start reclaiming the land; so that’s where reclamation comes in.
 
Now, when you do reclamation, in most of the places that I have seen reclamation like in Bolivia, parts of Brazil. I’ve also seen reclamation in Angola. After reclamation, another heavy work comes in, that is treatment of the soil, because by the time you finish reclamation, if you do not treat the soil, also nothing will germinate in that particular site. So those are the kinds of things.
  
Right now, I’m not even going deeper into that. Another Governor can come and worry about that one. I’m only worried more about at least the sand not being taken away. It is there and then we go ahead with it. That’s where we are.

But there’s a flip side. I remember the yeoman’s job you did towards Nyanya precincts and about land speculators. But the suggestion is that most of those who rush for land in Nasarawa State in the name of coming to farm are actually looking for opportunity to prospect for minerals. How are you tackling this issue of land speculation?
Well, I don’t know whether that is land speculation. The land speculation I told you we are looking at is where somebody will just come and buy ahead of time in order to sell at a higher price down the line.
 
But let me tell you, the danger about what some of them are doing is that just agricultural land does not, even if there are minerals there, if you do not obtain the licence from the Ministry of Solid Minerals, it’s actually a crime to explore, to exploit and to mine in that area and that’s what I just informed the people. So, there are two different things. Are people doing it? Yes. I just gave you an example. So far, they have not started the mining. But it is the village man now who is complaining that they only gave him N10 million. Hence, those are the kinds of things you do, because our people are not so experienced about some of these things and other people come from outside to take advantage.

This lack of technical competence, I want to ask, in your two terms in office, would you confidently say that Nasarawa State is ready for the rush for the carbon market?
Okay. It’s a very difficult question to answer, particularly when you talk about readiness. Do we have the people that are willing and actually committed to it? Yes, we do. Do we have the people who are knowledgeable to drive it? Yes, we do. Are we preparing other people to do that? Yes, we are doing the best we can.
 
But, you see, because I’m a technical person, readiness are two different things. When the readiness comes, you have the technology, you have the equipment, you have the investments, ready to take up and that part, I’m not sure whether we are.