FG seeks US aid on Solid Minerals

The Federal Government of Nigeria has requested for the assistance of the US government in a bid to develop the Solid Mineral capacity of the country.

This was made known after a meeting between the Minister of Solid Minerals, Mr. Kayode Fayemi and the US ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. James Entwistle in Abuja.

In this vein, a collaboration effort will commence next week in order to draft out a plan for the partnership aimed at making Nigeria competitive in the solid minerals industry.

This is also part of the efforts of the Buhari led administration in the agenda to diversify the economy and ensure minimal reliance on crude oil export heavily depended on for economic sustenance during past governments.

Fayemi noted that part of the challenges faced by the mining industry is the inability to determine the existing land mass due to the poor quality of data available, and how investors can be attracted into the country using bankable data.

The United States shall be assisting by using its vast resources in mining to help discover the quality and quantity of minerals available in Nigeria.

The Minister also made this known in a statement, ‘Another area of cooperation will be in the improvement of monitoring. There is a need for the regulatory authorities to have effective monitoring mechanisms to effectively monitor what is available and how they are being exported as revealed by the NEITI report’.

Entwistle in his confirmation of the collaboration commented that the geological agencies of the countries would combine resources in order to determine the mineral deposits available through data collection.