No provision to combat illegal miners in 2023 appropriation bill – Minister bemoans

Olamilekan Adegbite, the minister of mines and steel development, bemoaned the lack of funding for his ministry’s efforts to stop illegal mining in the budget proposal for 2023.

The minister is disabled, according to Adegbite, who stated this while presenting the 2023 budget proposal for his ministry to the House of Representatives Committee on Mines and Steel.

The minister expressed regret that a proposed mining policy considered in 2017 by his predecessor had not yet been implemented due to a lack of funding, but he claimed that the National Security Adviser (NSA) had the authority to issue the necessary instructions.

According to him, gold is transported across borders by illegal miners, and his ministry is working with Nigeria Customs to stop it.

He continued by saying that artisanal mining in Nigeria had been successful because more than 2000 cooperatives had registered with them. There is not a single appropriation for security in our budget, the minister declared. We will consult the national security adviser again for this reason.

“Yes, my predecessor with the president set up what you called the mining police in 2017. Essentially, the minister sits as the chairman of that mining police and it had the chief of army staff, the IGP, the commandant General of the Civil Defence people, the NSA, the Director, DSS. But that committee has not been funded since.

“That committee proposed to have personnel on the ground. So, we are not reacting to the situation. We prevent situations. If we have all those, we can prevent occurrences of illegal mining. But that committee is not funded. It’s just there.

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“If you put soldiers on the ground, they must have ration. They collect a daily ration. There is no funding for that.”

In response to a query regarding the Ajaokuta Steel Company in Kogi State, Adegbite claimed that COVID-19 in 2020 was largely to blame for the non-resuscitation.

He claimed that he had stated that the company would resume operations in exactly two years, in the first quarter of 2022, after taking part in a summit in Russia in 2019. He claimed that the pandemic, however, prevented the arrival of Russian technical experts.

He reassured that the company’s concession was on track, despite the fact that it was estimated that fixing the business would cost $2 billion.

The minister said, “Essentially, what you have seen in the budget on Ajaokuta every year is just personnel cost and maintenance.

“If they have anything capital, I am sure it’s very insignificant which can be taken away. When I came to the office in 2019, I thought why should anybody be budgeting so much for Ajaokuta when it’s not producing? But I went to see Ajaokuta first time myself and I quite understood what the person was being paid.

“If anybody has ever visited Ajaokuta, you know how vast Ajaokuta is. It’s a city on its own. If we don’t have personnel there who are keeping vigil and maintaining the place; they will do a dummy run for you, for something of that magnitude, it would have gone stiff. You won’t be able to run it again. But to do regular maintenance.

“So, what we hope to do before we leave office is to set Ajaokuta on a solid foundation, on a trajectory that in another year or two, it will start running.”