Ministry of Mines and Steel Development in partnership with SoundCore Group of Companies organised a Future Mineral Summit with the theme: “Leverage Future Minerals for Sustainable Development” yesterday in Abuja.
The summit was meant to grow our solid mineral and mining sector to compete with its contemporaries across the continent of Africa and stimulate growth of the Nigerian commodity and export market whist leveraging import substitution opportunities.
Addressing the Journalists on the occasion, Sen Tanko Al-Makura, Chairman Senate Committee on Solid Minerals, Mines, Steel and Metallurgy said the essence of the summit is to sensitize Nigerians on issues on minerals and what it holds for our economy, employment opportunity, wealth creation and for all round participation for people in the sector.
According to him, “We are so impressed about this because we in the Senate are working towards unbundling the sector so that it can provide platform and framework for effective exploitation of the mineral resources.”
Sen. Tanko who said unless the sector is unbundle to have private sector participation also said we may not get the best out of the endowment that God has given Nigeria in the area of solid minerals.

Contributing, Engr. Obadiah S. Nkom, Director General, Mining Cadastre Office (MCO), said the significance of the workshop is to brainstorm continually on ways of boasting the economy.
He used the opportunity to encourage the youths to harness the great potentials in the country.
In his words:
“The youth should not think there are wealth in the cities and leaving the wealth behind to the cities. ‘Rom was not built in a day’, they should not be in a hurry in terms of looking for fast money; that the mistake many people make.”
Engr. Nkom who charged the youth to be patience also said, “ Patience will provide you what you did not expect abundantly. When you are patience you will be proud you work for it; anything you did not work for does not last.”

Briefing the Media at the summit, Tony Nwakalor, Chief Executive Officer, SoundCore Group of Companies said that the summit will open doors for export opportunities. According to him, “this is the first future mineral summit and Nigerians have focus much on oil and gas sector. So we are giving room to foreigners on other opportunities and legally export those minerals .
“Extractive industry is very technical so a lot of this presentation at the summit is aimed at bringing out some of the policies and incentive that will attract private and public participation in the solid minerals sector.”
He further said that the idea for future mineral summit is to highlight that Nigeria is abundantly blessed with the occurrences of this mineral and to create road map for both the investors and every other stake holders participating in the future mineral of the future.

Also, one of the speakers at the event, Olusegun Adedayo, Senior Special Assistant to the Hon. Minister of Mines and Steel Development said, “we begin to develop our mining sector especially in the critical minerals. We also need to be mindful of our environment because the more mining they do the more it will affect the environment; so they have to balance and ensure that there is a framework to ensure that we will destroy the environment at the same time.”
Adedayo emphasized the situation in the Niger Delta region and said, “We would not want the situation we had at the Niger Delta where there is oil spills and other problems.”
He advised the stakeholders in mining sector to also protect the environment while mining.
The summit converged captains of industries and dignitaries from public and private sectors to proffer solution on issues in solid minerals and mining sector in Nigeria.