The Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dr Dele Alake has said that his ministry is determined to ensure that the solid minerals sector’s contribution to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) surpasses that of oil.
He said this in an interview on Sunday in Abuja.
He said that the administration of President Bola Tinubu was putting in place policies and initiatives aimed at diversifying the economy and ensuring that it generates more revenue than oil shortly.
He said that the move was necessary, especially with the global upsurge of energy transition, which would reduce the oil demand.
“We have been dependent on oil for decades, everyone has been dependent on the free flow of petrol dollars on the economy.
“And the critical sector of the economy such as agriculture and solid minerals was neglected.
“Our objective is to make the solid minerals contribution to the GDP to surpass oil.
“By the time all our policy initiatives go through the gestation period and begin to manifest results, the revenue that will be accruing to Nigeria from this sector would be enormous.
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“We are going to recover trillions to the coffers of the Nigerian government and for the benefit of Nigerians at large,” he said.
He said that Nigeria possesses the critical minerals in commercial quantities across its states needed for energy transition, which the ministry was aggressively marketing to attract big players to invest in the sector.
“We embarked on an aggressive marketing to unlocking the richness of the potential, making sure we push out information on the number of minerals that we have, the type and their demand nationally and internationally,” he said.
According to him, negotiations are ongoing with an auditing firm to audit the sector aimed at sanitising it to ensure the appropriate accruals to boost the country’s GDP.
“As we speak, we are far in our negotiations with an auditing firm to come and audit the entire sector, because we have lost a lot of money in the past.
“We know that operators will under-declare what they are carting away, even the payment of royalties, they underpay, taxes they evade.
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“So we are in the process of engaging an internationally recognised auditing firm that has done the same thing in other parts of the world, in more than 20 countries.
“So that they come and help us recover lost revenue and put some measures in place going forward so that we will no longer lose revenue.
“We are going to recover trillions to the coffers of the Nigerian government and for the benefit of Nigerians at large,” he said.
The minister had said that a German company, Geo Scan, conducted a preliminary survey that indicates that Nigeria has 750 billion Dollars’ worth of solid minerals underground, which had not been harnessed.
