The Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake, on Thursday in Kaduna said the Federal Government is putting policies in place to ensure judicious harnessing of resources in Nigeria.
He said the fundamental vision is to ensure that the solid mineral sector becomes the most critical significant contributor to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to take over from oil.
Speaking to newsmen in Kaduna, he noted that the state is blessed with a lot of mineral resources needed in the global market.
According to him, “Nigeria generally is blessed with an abundance of solid minerals, there’s hardly any state in this country that does not have a very good quality minerals.
Kaduna is one of the state highly blessed, but every part of the country is most blessed with solid minerals.”
He explained that the country’s climate is one of the best, with abundant rainfall, sunshine and has no frequent incidences of natural disaster.
The Minister said, “We have beautiful weather, climate, we have typography that is very fertile if you throw a maize in any part of Nigeria it grows without any fertilizer. What we need is the harnessing of the exploration, exploitations and judicious expenditure of the acurrable revenue.”
He stated that there is the need to tackle illegal mining, insecurity, its operations and the degredation of the environment as well as putting in place measures to tackle all the above factors.
He Nigeria needs to get the interest of foreign investors, the small scale miners and medium scale as well as the big players in the industry to globalise the solid minerals sector and maximise the resources the country has.
FG placing measures to harness mineral resources – Dele Alake