Keynote Address of the Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dr Dele Alake, at the Second Annual Mining Conference organised by Businessday and Olanihun Ajayi & Co. on Thursday, April 17, 2025.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
All protocols duly observed.
With great respect for BusinessDay’s resilience in the newspaper market and the need to reciprocate its support for the transformation in the solid minerals sector, I join you as a keynote speaker to lead the discussion at this year’s edition of the Solid Minerals Conference.
Business Day is a case study in resilience. Your founder, Frank Aigbogun, was the longest-serving news editor of Vanguard Newspaper. He later became the editor of the newspaper, owned by Uncle Sam Amuka.
The two positions put him at the centre of the publishing business, enabling him to master, over the course of two decades, the political economy of newspaper management from news gathering to editing, editing to printing, printing to circulation, sales, advertising and human resource management.
Indeed, his expertise and experience helped him in setting up Businessday for a future project.
Frank did not start everything at once. He began by setting up and running Wordsmiths, a printing and branding company. It was a smart transition that finally ended at Businessday.
One of the survival strategies of Businessday to date is inviting like-minded investors to buy into the project and spread the risk. Despite boardroom hiccups, BusinessDay has remained a formidable competitor in the upper-class media market.
The lesson of today’s event is the application of innovation and adaptability as survival tactics to build resilience.
Resilience requires awareness of changes in the environment and understanding the forces driving those changes, the direction of the changes, and the positioning a company must locate and acquire to enhance its competitive advantage.
Let me break it down. When I assumed office as the Minister of Solid Minerals Development, I reviewed the work done then and charted a new strategy to transform the sector. That strategy is encapsulated in the Seven-Point Agenda for International Competitiveness and Domestic Consolidation.
The key elements, such as establishing the Nigeria Solid Minerals Corporation, the Mining Marshals, joint ventures, acquisition of geological data, propagation of the opportunities in the mining industry to the global community, promoting value addition through mineral processing companies and enforcing community development agreements to promote the welfare of our people, are predictably sure to deliver on the target. The goal is to deliver the dividends of democracy in line with President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope campaign.
Our progress report, 17 months after, is as follows:
1. Establishing the Nigeria Solid Minerals Corporation
The Federal Executive Council has approved the establishment of the company and appointed its Chief Executive Officer, Mr Martins Imonitie. The company has a temporary office in Abuja, the federal capital. The Ministry of Finance. Incorporated, MOFI is working with us, and a globally recognised business consultancy manages the start-up. It will be a truly global player with a strong
Nigerian backbone in terms of human resources and financial foundation. Nigerians will get a share of the company through an investment offer, the government will own 25 percent, and private investors will own 50 percent.
2. Joint ventures
Joint venture proposals from domestic and international investors to partner with Nigeria Solid Minerals Corporation are already being collated and will be transferred to the company as soon as it enters the market.
Notably, the company already has legacy mining licences inherited from the defunct Nigerian Mining Company, which will serve as its equity in minerals processing deals.
Initial studies by the AFC and SMDF confirmed the competitiveness and viability of their proposed investment in establishing a critical minerals midstream facility in Nigeria. At an indicative CAPEX of $1.3bn, this will be Nigeria’s most significant mining private sector project and foreign direct investment. The project will contribute $1.2bn of economic output to GDP annually, over $25bn contribution during the project lifecycle, and $8bn in foreign exchange earnings. This investment is an endorsement of the ministry’s ongoing reforms and the SMDF and AFC goals of catalysing private sector-led investment in the solid minerals sector.
This occurs in the public sector as joint ventures thrive in the private mining sector. This is evident in the number of transfers of ownership of licences according to records from the Mining Cadastral Office. The MCO received 152 modification applications, including 88 renewals, 43
partial conversions, six full conversions, seven complete transfers and eight partial transfers.
3. Geologica exploration
Geological data drives exploration, mining and, ultimately, processing. Our airborne geophysical exploration covers a third of the country, especially with “magrad” methods.
Some levels of geochemical exploration have been achieved on the baseline details. However, a better-targeted geochemical exploration on a closer scale for resource estimation is required to enable us to compete with other big players in the mining industry.
The Nigerian Geological Survey Agency is dedicating about N25bn of its total budget to the exploration and resource estimate.
of specific (transition and energy) minerals such as LITHIUM, GOLD, COPPER, PLEAD/ZINC, COAL, URANIUM, etc., in strategic locations of the country. The ministry plans to support the agency with more funds.
While we are on this course, companies are also offering to supplement our efforts by engaging in geological exploration to recoup their investment by commercialising the data. Expect a quantum leap in Nigeria’s geological data this year.
4. Investment promotions
Our cost-effective strategy of leveraging international conferences and exhibitions to market the opportunities for mining in our country rather than a country-to-country campaign has increased awareness of our potential and led to bilateral and multilateral understanding.
Although it was birthed during the visit of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to President Macron of France, the Nigerian-French bilateral understanding has developed positively through follow-up meetings at the Future Minerals Forum in Riyadh and the Mining Indaba in Cape Town.
The French government has agreed to equip the laboratory of the Nigerian Geological Survey Agency, train young geologists in modern mining technologies abroad, and encourage the French solid minerals sector to enter joint ventures with Nigerian counterparts.
The government of Western Australia recently approved the regular training of Nigerian mining professionals. The first batch of trainees will depart next month.
British and Saudi Arabian investors are coming together to invest across the mineral value chain, from mining to manufacturing electric cars.
From Latin America, we have held meetings with the leaders of Mexico and Venezuela with vast prospects of investments.
Today, we have become the indisputable leader of mining countries in Africa, thanks to the emergence of Nigeria as the pioneer chairperson of the African Minerals Strategy Group based on my advocacy for value addition and opposition to the reckless export of raw minerals. AMSG recently marked its first anniversary in Riyadh.
One of our goals is how to use this position to attract investment to Africa in general and Nigeria in particular.
We are happy that these efforts are yielding fruits. In the first quarter of this year, the MCO received 955 applications for title grants. Six hundred and fifty-one
were for exploration, 270 for small-scale mining, 49 for quarry leases and 24 for reconnaissance permits.
I approved 867 applications, including 512 exploration licences, 295 small-scale mining leases, 60 quarry leases and 5 mining leases.
In the first quarter of 2025, MCO generated ₦6,957,826,200 from payment of annual service fees, application processing fees, and renewal of titles.
5. The new security architecture
The Mining Marshals, the kinetic instrument for combating illegal mining, apprehended over 300 illegal miners, including foreigners.
It also combated illegal mining perpetrated by companies caught exploiting minerals without a licence. Over 90 mine sites illegally occupied were liberated.
In the non-kinetic operations, on average, 20 new cooperatives are formalised across the country every month. Between January and March, we registered 57 new co-operatives. Within the same period, the number of registered private mineral buying centres grew by 118, bringing the total number registered in the last 15 months to 549.
6. The addition of value by promoting new processing and manufacturing firms stays on the front burner. Lithium, rare earth, bauxite and gold plants are due for commissioning this quarter.
7. Community development is the ultimate goal of our policies and programmes. The Community Development Agreement is the instrument for making it happen. I wish to commend companies concluding negotiations of the CDA and urge those who have not done so to comply immediately to avoid the penalties.
Ladies and gentlemen, these achievements, including the increase in statutory fees, are building the resilience needed for the long-term efficiency of the solid minerals sector.
I wish to commend BusinessDay for tracking these positive developments and leveraging them to be the medium of reference in matters of solid minerals development. Similarly, their partner, Olanihun Ajayi & Co., is also developing its Chambers as a legal resource for mining litigation and consultancy.
All of us – the ministry, the newspaper and the chambers – will continue to work together to create a resilient solid minerals sector for the benefit of our people and to the glory of the Almighty.
