Get Guardian on GoogleTo block leakages, the federal government has inaugurated a 14-member ministerial committee, to ensure that revenues generated by artisanal miners are properly streamlined in the country.
Inaugurating the committee in Abuja, Wednesday, the Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Olamilekan Adegbite, explained that blockage of mineral revenue leakages would boost the economy.
Adegbite added that this will encourage more people to go into mining, and also help lift about 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in the next 10 years through solid mineral sector, as envisaged by the government. He, therefore, tasked the Committee to properly record and work out modalities to diversify the economy from crude oil to increase the revenue base from Nigeria’s over 44 mineral resources.
The Committee has the Minister of State, Mines and Steel Development, Dr Okechukwu Ogah, as Chairman, and Permanent Secretary, of the Ministry, Dr. Abdulkadir Mu’azu.
Others are: Director-General, Mining Cadastral Office, O.S. Nkom; Representative of Nigerian Society of Mining
Engineers; Nigerian Society of Engineers; and Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), and a host of others.
Responding, Ogah thanked the Minister for constituting the Committee promptly, and promised to work tirelessly to achieve set mandate.He assured of members commitment to unravelling the cause of current low revenue generation in the sector, and find ways of blocking such leakages from false declaration of mineral production.
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