The Nigeria Mining Cadastre Office(NMCO) has said it has revoked titles of 3,402 companies for defaulting on the terms of their licences and operations.
Director General of NMCO, Mr Obadiah Nkom, who disclosed this in a statement, noted that the revocation was as a result of the companies failing to make use of their licenses.
“NMCO revoked the mining rights of companies that were not using their licences for operations, and the office has generated over N3.7 billion in 2022.
“We are very transparent; and if you need the Certified True Copy of any document, an application belonging to anybody or any licence or whatever, the law permits us to give it to you.
“Because anything we are doing can be a subject of litigation; like we said, in terms of revoked titles, recently, we published a list of defaulters numbering 3,032 and we have revoked titles of 3,402.
“And, we equally have people that have grants; they have been communicated, but when you cancel it, you see lawyers writing us about following the provisions”, the DG said.
Nkom also said some applicants who applied for licences were yet to collect them, and that these defaulters be gazetted before action would be taken.
“You send letters to the applicants’ address; and if after 30 days, he does not remedy the defect, you revoke your gazette. As much as we appreciate the communication.
“Some people will look for windows for excuses to give at the court, but once it is on the gazette, we ensure we put it on our website so that you don’t have any excuses.
“The gazette is final; we now have those ones to arm ourselves so that at the end of the day, we know what it is to lose a case,’’ he said.

By: Corlins Walter