It is highly disheartening that the nation’s vast swathes of solid mineral fields have for decades been left prostrate, dormant and largely untapped. This has robbed us of a seismic wealth that could easily have supplanted oil as our economic mainstay or at least complemented oil earnings to solidify our economy.
It is a tragic irony that larger segments of Nigerians have, as a result, continued to be walloped by pangs of acute poverty, hunger and deprivations in the midst of our prodigious and collective natural wealth. It is akin to the saga of the proverbial man who chooses to wash his hands with spittle while rivers sluice all around him.
The people’s misery has been exacerbated by the cost-of- living crisis spurred by the removal of fuel subsidy and the current administration’s harsh economic policies that have plummeted the Nigerian average household’s purchasing power.
Nigeria is, indeed, blessed with commercially viable deposits of gold, lithium, limestone, gemstones and other strategic minerals that could see the country play at the global level of energy transition economy.
So naturally endowed are we that virtually every state in the country has rich deposits of at least one or two solid minerals in commercial quantities.
But plagued by endemic hiccups, some disingenuous, the solid minerals sector has remained largely bedwragled, leaving the massive fields at the mercy of non- state actors who feast on and plunder the wealth in cahoots with foreign cartels.
The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) had warned in a 2023 report that weak oversight was fuelling illicit financial flows in the mining sector, highlighting a deeper governance crisis that threatened moves to diversify the economy through non-oil sector earnings.
“At a time when the Federal Government is aggressively promoting solid minerals as an alternative revenue source to oil,” NEITI observed, “the sector remains plagued by illegal mining, smuggling, opaque ownership structures and weak institutional coordination.”
According to NEITI, illicit financial flows occur through illegal extraction, under-reporting of production, trade mispricing, smuggling and money laundering linked to organised criminal networks. These leakages, it said, deprive the government of tax revenues, royalties and export earnings at a time when the country faces mounting fiscal pressures and rising debt obligations.
Fragmentation or lack of effective synergy among regulatory agencies has been identified as a major blight in the sector. Multiple institutions, including the Ministry of Solid Minerals Development, the Mining Cadastre Office, Customs, NEITI and financial intelligence agencies, are said to be operating with weak coordination.
And in the absence of an integrated digital monitoring system, production data, export records and ownership structures become difficult to reconcile. This leaves loopholes easily exploited by illegal operators.
The dominance of artisanal and small-scale mining is also one of the major challenges plaguing the sector. NEITI estimates that more than 70 per cent of mining activities are controlled by this informal segment, while about 80 per cent of mining activities in parts of the North-West are allegedly illegal. In states such as Zamfara, Katsina, and Kaduna, illegal mining has become intertwined with insecurity, banditry and criminal financing networks.
This link between mining and insecurity is believed to be the most dangerous factor holding down the sector, as mineral -rich communities have increasingly been attracting armed groups that impose illegal levies, control mining sites and smuggle resources across borders.
Opaque ownership structures is another major problem. Many mining licences are held through subterfuges that conceal the real beneficiaries behind operations. This provides a conduit for politically exposed persons, foreign interests and criminal actors to exploit our mineral wealth without accountability.
The Tinubu administration has, however, breathed some life into the sector, asserting more government’s presence. The administration is focusing on transitioning Nigeria from raw mineral exportation to local value addition and industrial processing.
Mining licenses are now strictly tied to in-country processing and refining. It prioritizes utilizing extracted minerals as local industrial feedstock rather than a pure “mine to port” export approach. It is also highlighting strategic minerals like lithium for global energy transition and battery technology.
The government has raised dedicated Mining Marshals to tackle illegal mining, as artisanal miners are also being formalized into cooperatives. It has also established the Nigerian Solid Minerals Corporation for public-private partnerships.
The Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dr. Dele Alake, told State House correspondents during Tinubu’s second anniversary briefing that the sector generated over ₦38 billion in revenue in 2024, up from just ₦6 billion the previous year, despite receiving only 18% of its ₦29 billion budgeted allocation.
Alake said the sector has witnessed an increase in investor interest buoyed by the administration’s mining sector reforms.
He listed the $600 million lithium processing plant near the Kaduna-Niger border; the $200 million lithium refinery on the outskirts of Abuja, nearing completion, and two additional processing plants in Nasarawa, slated for commissioning before Quarter 2025.
He had enthused: “These investments follow the administration’s insistence that no miner gets a licence without a clear local processing plant. The days of exporting raw minerals from pit to port are over.
“When we resumed, the entire sector generated ₦6 billion annually. By the end of 2024, we hit ₦38 billion. And this was with just 18% of our ₦29 billion budgetary allocation released. It shows how effective our policy framework has been. We are now focused on turning our mineral wealth into domestic economic value—jobs, technology, and manufacturing.”
As part of its seven-point agenda, the Minister said he had taken aggressive steps to curb illegal mining and formalise artisanal activity.
He said over 300 illegal miners were arrested in 2023, 150 prosecutions were ongoing then, and nine convictions have been secured, including foreign nationals.
“We adopted both kinetic and non-kinetic strategies. While enforcement has yielded results through the Mining Marshals, we’re also empowering locals by formalising them into cooperatives, making them eligible for finance and revenue sharing,” he said.
He added that over 250 mining cooperatives have been established nationwide to absorb informal miners into the formal economy.
These are laudable steps towards promoting solid minerals as an alternative to oil, but it is not yet ‘Uhuru’ or freedom. The sector remains on the Exclusive Legislative List, limiting the window of exploration into the vast and pervasive solid mineral fields to the government at the center.
Under Section 44(3) and Item 39 of the Second Schedule (Part I) of the 1999 Constitution(as amended), mines, minerals and natural gas are under the exclusive control of the Federal Government.
The Nigerian Minerals and Mining Act 2007 grants the Federal Government the sole legal power to issue mining licences, regulate operations and manage solid mineral exploration.
Hence, everything and everyone gravitate towards the centre as far as mineral resources are concerned. So, state governors maintain a somewhat standoffish posture to the whole thing. Whereas Nigeria, as a behemoth, is too big for our minerals or treasures buried in vast swathes of thick vegetations and difficult acquatic terrains to be successfully policed from the centre against trespass.
That explains why interlopers are having a field day feasting on those precious resources, while a larger percentage of those treasures remain untapped, as noted earlier.
Much of the disingenuous hiccups plaguing the sector will be frontally addressed and government’s reforms will be complemented if the resources are placed on the Concurrent List in the Constitution to allow the sub-regional governments share stakes and responsibilities with the center in the solid minerals sector.
Of course, there has been an attempt by the 10th National Assembly to amend the 1999 Constitution to transfer mines, minerals, oil fields and natural gas from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List.
The decentralization bill was sponsored by House Speaker, Abbas Tajudeen, and other lawmakers such as O.K. Chinda, Gaza Jonathan Gbefi and Ikeagwuonu Onyinye Ugochinyere. It seeks to alter Item 39 of the Second Schedule and Section 44 of the Constitution to grant both federal and state governments joint regulatory and revenue-generating powers over solid minerals and natural resources.
The House of Representatives passed the bill for a second reading, moving it to the committee stage for review. But the proposals for state control of mineral resources, unfortunately and quite unexpectedly, faced resistance and were initially dropped or declined by the National Assembly Joint Committee on Constitution Review.
The primary reasons the proposals became stalled include sharp regional divisions among the lawmakers during the debates over the bill. Representatives from regions that rely heavily on the federal allocation pool argue that allowing individual states exclusive or joint control would trigger extreme regional economic disparities.
Opponents maintain that decentralized resource control could undermine national unity and potentially provoke localized conflicts over resource boundaries.
There are also arguments regarding the capacity of state governments to effectively regulate capital-intensive extraction industries. Those who are vehemently opposed to the idea argue that shifting control away from the federal level could exacerbate local elite corruption, result in severe environmental neglect and lead to weak oversight of mining operations.
Some policy experts and lawmakers also caution that many local host communities lack the structured legal frameworks and institutional maturity to manage the sudden influx of autonomous resource wealth safely, which could trigger internal community warfare or security breakdowns.
However, the argument is neither here nor there. What goes for the states also goes for the center. If the control of resources is not being abused at the center, why should sub-regional governments abuse the opportunity? Are those running the show at the federal level angels?
The bitter truth is that regions that are so used to “freebies” in the mould of federal allocations may need to imbibe the virtue of working hard to generate resources on their own and stop opposing moves at regional resource autonomy.
Ordinarily, most of these fears could easily be tackled by strict regulatory frameworks that would erect effective bulwarks of checks and balances to guard against possible abuses. We had a similar experiment during the First Republic when the regions had enormous leverage to explore their respective resources.
Many of the legacies of the regional premiers of the era remain tell tale signs of the beauty of the autonomy of resources. Why are we sighing away from replicating a similar arrangement this time?
We believe giving the sub-regional units a stake in the exploration and management of the nation’s mineral wealth will reduce their current over dependence on the center for survival because, as noted earlier, there is hardly any state that is not blessed with one or two commercially viable solid minerals.
And politically, it will reduce the pressure on the Federal Government and, more importantly, ameliorate the do-or-die craze to control the center as well as the deleterious slugfest that goes with it at every election season.