The Mineral Sector Support for the Economic Diversification Project (MinDiver), in the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development, on Wednesday, completed the South-Western region block of Nigeria to de-risking sector.

It also noted that many youths had benefited from the vocational training in jewellery and gemstone programme supported by the project.

Project Coordinator of MinDiver, Engr. Sallim Salaam, disclosed this in Abuja, during the press briefing on ‘handing over of the first set of geological data to the Ministry of Mines,’ he noted that the data would assist to attract investment into mining industry.

He said: “MinDiver project has successfully trained 41 Nigerians selected across all the geopolitical zones of the country on master Jewellery-making and design. In addition, the graduating students were all given starter packs comprising basic Jewellery making tools to facilitate their establishment on the Jewellery trade.

“Technical departments and agencies of the Ministry are also being strengthened in terms of equipment provision and training. Today’s event marks another landmark achievement in the area of geodata acquisition for attracting meaningful investment into the Nigerian mining sector.

“A high-resolution airborne survey conducted over the proof of concept areas in the South-Western block of Nigeria has been completed, processed and interpreted, while the same is being carried out in the remaining part of the country.

“Therefore, what we are doing today is to release the first batch of the processed and interpreted data to the ministry for onward release to the public to assist in de-risking the sector. Already, the ministry has approved data dissemination policy that will guide the release of the data to the general public.”

In her address, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Mines and Steel Development, Dr Mary Ogbe, called on others valuable investors to take advantage of the numerous efforts of the ministry, such as the new high resolution airborne data to carry out further exploration of mineral titles.

She said: “The Airborne MagRad Survey involves the acquisition of 1,580,727-line kilometer of Magnetics and Radiometric data, equivalent to 300,000 square kilometer of highly prospective areas of mineralization within nineteen states of the Federation.

“The survey is one of many reform activities planned and executed by the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development as government incentive to reduce the risk of investment in the mining sector. For operational reasons and other technical considerations, the suvey progresses in logical blocks, beginning with the southwestern block.

“With the completion of data acquisition, processing and interpretation of the SW block, I have the pleasure to handover the data of the SW Block to the DG, Nigerian Geological Survey Agency (NGSA) for upload onto the National Geodata System.”