Delivering his keynote address during the ceremony in Abuja, the minister said with the launch of the portal, Nigeria has now joined the league of jurisdictions in the global mining space that have deployed technology towards achieving transparency and ease of doing business in mineral sector governance.
He stated that the dividends of the administration’s commitment to turning around the economic fortunes, by simplifying the modalities for entry and participation in the jurisdiction have started yielding positive results with the results of the improvement in brand Nigeria’s standing in the global market.
This, according to him, has led to Nigeria’s strong showing in the recently released World Bank report that stated that the country has moved up 24 points in the ease-of-doing-business index for 2018, and ranked as one of the ten most improved economies in the world.
“These welcome developments in the country at this time have had a concomitant impact at the sectoral level with increased mining-related activity in Nigeria and a growing number of new entrants and participants in mining in Nigeria.
“The World Risk Report on the global mining sector, published by the Mining Journal, indicates that Nigeria has made remarkable improvements in both hard risk and perceived risk factors about conducting business in Nigeria’s mining space. The Nigerian Mining Jurisdiction is now considered to have a better investment risk profile than many countries on the African continent”, he added.
Earlier in his welcome address, the Minister of State for Mines and Steel Development, Alhaji Abubakar Bawa Bwari said the portal was intended to ease the process of obtaining mining licenses, mineral title application, encourage online payment of royalties and provide credible and timely intervention about the sector.
He said the integrated web portal was conceived as a means of making information more accessible to players and the public alike, pointing out that it was part of the initiative the ministry conceived after their inauguration as ministers by President Muhammadu Buhari in order to revamp the sector.
According to him, this is one innovation that from the very beginning we knew we needed for the sector to become accessible to investors. We realised that change is usually difficult, and unless you get people to buy in, you won’t get the kind of success you crave.
“The current fate of our legacy projects like Ajaokuta, Itape and the aluminum smelting company was self-inflicted by leaders who failed to demonstrate the right attitude or take the right decision. We have since made serious efforts to salvage the situation and although things have not moved as fast as we wished, there has been an improvement and the future is certainly brighter now.
“However, the government is a continuum and as long as subsequent administrations keep to the track, mining will become the crown jewel of our economy,” he said.
and then