FG assures protection of gold deposits, investors, miners in Nasarawa, FCT

The Federal Government, on Wednesday, assured protection of gold deposits, investors, and miners in Nasarawa State and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

The assurance was made by the Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Arc Olamilekan Adegbite, while receiving the Governor of Nasarawa State, Engr Abdullahi Suleiman, at the Ministry’s Headquarters in Abuja.

Adegbite who was excited over the discovery of commercial gold deposits in the Nasarawa-Abuja axis under the National Integrated Mineral Exploration Project, NIMEP, undertaken by the Ministry, revealed that the NIMEP project had cost the Ministry N15 billion, and that has generated troves of important geoscience data seriously needed to change the narrative in the industry, which also foreign investors are excited about the juicy mining prospects it had indicated as contained in a statement signed by the Special Assistant on Media to the Minister, Ayodeji Adeyemi.

He said: “It is a pleasure to receive the Governor of Nasarawa State in my office today and this should not be a surprise because Nasarawa State is the home of solid minerals in the country.

“We had an earlier discussion about recent discoveries of precious minerals along the Nasarawa, Abuja axis.

“As you probably might be aware, we have been talking about this for a while, there is a programme we call NIMEP executed by the ministry were government has put about N15 billion into exploration for minerals, one of which is gold, and we have done this exploration over the country and have discovered a very nice track of gold deposits especially between Abuja and Nasarawa were we share borders.

“We know that gold mining attracts a lot of undesirables. Wherever this people smell gold, if I may use the word smell, whenever they have inkling that there is gold, it somehow attracts these undesirable elements.

“It always follows that we have illegality developing around there.”

Meanwhile, the Minister assured that government would not allow any form of criminality including banditry to overrun mining sites.

“We are working hard to nip these in the bud. We don’t want banditry to come to Nasarawa and Abuja on the trail of gold as it has unfortunately happened in Zamfara.

“You will recall that just about a week or two ago, the government reiterated its ban in Zamfara.  Mining was actually banned in Zamfara in April 2019, and about a few weeks ago government had to reiterate that ban and also had to declare a no fly zone. So we do not want a repeat of that in Nasarawa State”, he said.

He maintained that with the special mines police who is saddled with curbing the menace of illegal mining in the country, criminal elements would not be allowed to infiltrate genuine miners.

“We will be working with security agencies, possibly bringing in the military to make sure that we prevent such an occurrence of illegal mining in this axis of Nasarawa and the Federal Capital Territory.

“So I have been talking with the Governor and we are going to involve security apparatus”, he added.

While speaking, the Governor of Nasarawa State, Engr Abdullahi Suleiman promised to syenergize with the Federal Government through the Ministry to prevent illegal mining snowball in his State into banditry, because there are indicators pointing towards that direction, and that has been a concern to his administration following the growing insecurity across the country.

However, he mentioned that his administration has attracted genuine mining companies to the State despite experiencing some forms of illegal gold mining activities in the Uke area of the State.

He said: “Let me thank the Minister for the wonderful reception, he has accorded us and we are also thankful for the NIMEP programme undertaken by the Federal Government.

“We strongly believe that the future of this country is in minerals and not necessary in oil and gas. God has blessed Nigeria with minerals in every State that is why in Nasarawa State we are taking mining very seriously, we are working very hard to ensure the safety of mining sites and to ensure that wherever mining activity is going on in Nasarawa, it is going on legally.”