By Prince Okafor

CUSTOMS and Immigration Agencies are to blame for illegal mining in Nigeria, the Special Adviser to the Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Professor Okey Onyejekwe said.

Onyejekwe, who spoke to Vanguard on the sidelines of the Stakeholders” Round Table on Nigeria’s Energy Mix Strategy, held in Lagos, also said that the activities of illegal miners have been depriving the government of accruable income.

According to him  “Part of the challenges we are trying to deal with is the leakages in the sector. People who hold license don’t use it. They sell them to some Chinese who are now mining illegally and smuggling with the cooperation of the customs, immigration and others. “Nigeria has not really invested in the mining sector. There is a lot of Gold that is produced in Nigeria, but it is done illegally.  If you look at the national account, you can’t see even gold appearing as part of our revenue, but we know that people are smuggling it in large quantity.”

He explained that though Nigeria has about 44 proven minerals, it still imports most of them.

“Come to think of bitumen, we are still importing about 85 percent of our bitumen, for roads construction when we have abundance of bitumen in Ondo state. “Even industrial minerals, all this tiles that we find here, we import them, but we have tiles all over the Nation,” he said.

He also noted that due to low pricing in the commodity, it has been difficult to attract foreign investors. “One of the things the Ministry has done now is to open licenses for people to produce or return their licenses. Some of these licenses have been revoked, because some people got the licenses through their connections with those in government. They don’t use them. They just hold them, and when you have some serious investors who want to produce, they don’t have the licenses to.”

He explained that it was published that people who are not using their license should come and renew with prove that you are going to do something with the licenses.

According to Onyejekwe the Ministry is focused on transparent issuance of licences to make the process open to genuine investors.

“The first thing the Ministry is doing is to introduce transparency in the licensing, so that you know who owned the license.

“Those who have the license must be people who have the capacity to use it and produce, that we have done by reinforcement of the regulation.

“We are focusing on domestic industrial production, particularly on bitumen, in the next few months. We will open up the bid for people who want to invest in it, because, 85 percent of the tar that we use on the road and asphalt, we import when we are number two in the world,” he added.