THE Lagos State government has shut down the operations of sand miners in the state a bid to review the process of mining, the Commissioner of Energy and Mineral Resources, Olawale Oluwo has disclosed.

Speaking in Abuja Monday when he paid official visit to the Minister of solid Minerals, Dr Kayode Fayemi, Oluwo said the state would also set up a fund to pool resources together for the restoration of degraded mined sites.

He said: “Just last Friday, the Lagos state government shut down all the land mines from Ikorodu to Epe down to Badagary. That will give us an opportunity to review the environmental degradation that exercise has caused. I have visited those ones in Epe and Ikorodu and I plan to those in Badagary next week. We are now working on how we can restore the environment. The mining sites might remained shut down for about one month in order to ensure that the restoration of the environment is done in a professional manner. The government also plan to establish a fund where some money would be set aside from the land mining activities which we can use to restore the environment after mining activities.”

Oluwo revealed that Lagos state is planning to host a power summit which would be a platform for the state to work with the Federal Government on its power initiatives.

The Commissioner also explained the committee established to work on the 24 hours power supply target would soon release a strategic roadmap on the initiative.

“The first thing that the committee did was to set up machinery for the development of a roadmap for 24 hours power supply to Lagos. We expect that the roadmap would be unveiled within the next 45 days. Though the power sector has been privatized into the generation, transmission and distribution. But for us in Lagos, we are adding gas supply to make the supply chain a four-legged approach. Experience in the last 10 years has shown to us that there can’t sustainable power supply without steady gas supply. Lagos state government does not generate power but it has brought the stakeholders together under a committee platform that has chairmen and chief executives of generation and distribution companies, gas suppliers and the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN),” he stated.