In two-years, Nigeria lost N3.23trillion ($9billion) to Illegal mining

Yesterday, the federal government disclosed that Nigeria lost a whopping N3.23trillion ($9billion) to the export of proceeds of illegal mining activities between 2014 and 2015.

Making this disclosure at the end of weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting which was held in the conference room of the Office of the First Lady in the Presidential Villa, Abuja, the Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, said the $9 billion loss in the sector was contained in a recent report by the Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI). 
In government's bid to curb the menace of illegal mining and increase revenue accruable to government coffers, Fayemi said FEC approved N987 million for the purchase of 50 Toyota Hillux vehicles at the cost of over N19 million per one for deployment towards the monitoring and curbing of illegal mining in 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

According to Fayemi, the bulk of the significant increase of 8.97 per cent in the contribution of agriculture and industry to gross domestic product growth (GDP) in the third quarter of 2017 as released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) last Monday came from mining and quarrying activities.

Fayemi who said the $9 billion loss was recorded mainly from the illegal export of gold, lead, tin and coal, added that the council consequently approved the memo he presented to it pursuant to the approval of the constitution of Special Mining Surveillance Task Force with the mandate to monitor and curb illegal mining across the country. He said the approval was sequel to the realisation that the deployment of one vehicle per state could not make significant impact in the monitoring of illegal mining activities.

He also disclosed that the task force will be made up security personnel deployed from all security agencies including the Nigeria Police, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Department of State Services (DSS), National Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) and the office of National Security Adviser.

Further disclosing that the police had established mines police to support the initiative, Fayemi said consequently, a mines police commissioner had been appointed by the Nigeria Police and similar office has also been created in NSCDC.