Solid Minerals Commission Underway As Senate Mulls Bill

A bill seeking the establishment of a Solid Minerals Producing Areas Development Commission to address the environmental devastation and other related matters in the country, yesterday, passed second reading in the Senate.
The bill, sponsored by Senator Yakubu Oseni, also has the objectives of formulating policies and guidelines for the development of the mineral producing areas.
Oseni presenting the bill at plenary said that the bill seeks to provide a framework for an for accelerated development of the Nigerian solid mineral sector in line with the need to diversify the nation’s economy and reduce the dependence on the dwindling oil revenues.
According to him, the “conception, planning and implementation, of the bill are in accordance with set rules of projects and programmes for sustainable and regulations, development of the minerals producing areas in the field of transportation, including roads, health, employment, industrialization, agriculture and fisheries, housing and urban development, water supply, electricity and telecommunications.
According to him, the contemplated overhead costs, recurrent and capital expenditure of the commission when established is N158,042,050.32.
He said, “I make bold to say that Nigeria is richly endowed with a variety of solid minerals of various categories ranging from precious metals to various precious stones and industrial minerals. The Nigerian Extractive Industries and Transparency Initiative (NEITI) reported that there are approximately 40 different kinds of solid minerals and precious metals buried in Nigerian soil waiting to be exploited.
“The sector offers a viable alternative to petroleum for foreign exchange earnings.
“Globally, the mining industry has been a close rival to the petroleum industry, while Nigeria only earns a paltry $89million per annum from it. The commercial value of Nigeria’s solid minerals has been estimated to run into hundreds of billions of dollars,” the lawmaker stressed.
In his contribution, Senator Smart Adeyemi, noted that every state and region of the country has natural endowments of one mineral or the other.
Adeyemi said the importance of the commission cannot be overemphasized, as the regulatory body would enable government to organise harness mining activities and save government trillions of Naira being lost to illegal activities in the country.
In his remarks, the Senate President, Dr. Ahmad Lawan, referred the bill to the Committee on Solid Minerals.
The committee’s report is expected within four weeks.

By: Nneka Amaechi-Nnadi, Abuja