Moses Uwagbale
The Ministry of Mines and Steel Development, Mr Olamilekan Adegbite, has said Nigeria was working to avoid the repeat of Zamfara experience in Nasarawa State, where bandits were in charge of gold mining.
Adegbite who received the Governor of Nassarawa State, Alhaji Abdullahi Sule recently, said that the ministry was working with relevant security agencies to avert an unwanted scenario that occurred in Zamfara in Nassarawa.
The minister revealed that gold had been discovered on Abuja-Nasarawa axis through the National Integrated Mineral Exploration Project (NIMEP), a program under the ministry.
He said the NIMEP project that cost the ministry N15 billion had generated troves of geoscience data that made foreign investors excited about the juicy mining prospects in the country.
“It is a pleasure to receive the Governor of Nasarawa in my office and this should not be a surprise because the state is the home of solid minerals in the country.
“We had an earlier discussion about recent discoveries of precious minerals on Nasarawa -Abuja axis.
“As you probably might be aware, we have been talking about this for a while, there is a programme we call NIMEP executed by the ministry. The Federal government has put about N15 billion into exploration for minerals.
“One of which is gold, and we have done this exploration over the country and have discovered a very nice track of gold deposits especially between Abuja and Nasarawa where we share borders,” he said.
Adegbite equally allayed the concerns of the governor on the menace of illegal gold mining snowballing in the state due to the large deposits of gold in the state.
“The ministry is working with relevant security agencies to avert such an unwanted scenario happening, we know that gold mining attracts a lot of undesirables.
“Wherever this people smell gold, if I may use the word smell, it somehow attracts these undesirable elements.
“We are working hard to nip these in the bud, we don’t want banditry to come to Nasarawa and Abuja on the trail of gold as it has unfortunately happened in Zamfara.”
Adegbite added that the ministry had a special mines police that was saddled with curbing the menace of illegal mining in the country.
“We will be working with security agencies, possibly bringing in the military to make sure that we prevent such an occurrence of illegal mining in Nasarawa and the Federal Capital Territory.”
In his response, Governor, Sule said that the state was prepared to work with the ministry to prevent the snowballing of illegal mining in the state.
He said that his administration was indeed concerned about the threat of illegal mining and its associated vices.
” We strongly believe that the future of this country is in mineral and not necessary in oil and gas.
“God has blessed Nigeria with mineral in every state that is why in Nasarawa, we are taking mining very serious.
“We are working very hard to ensure the safety of all mining sites wherever mining activities are going on in Nasarawa legally.”
