By Kehinde Bamigbetan
Out of several hundred licences that were revoked for offences ranging from dormancy to defaults in payment of service fees, only one of the defaulters is raising hell. This foreigner held licences for several years without any operation and refused to pay a single kobo in service to the government. He is now sponsoring economic saboteurs and unpatriotic elements to attack regulation enforcement, claiming it stifles sector sanitisation.
This sponsor is the highest debtor in the sector’s history for annual service fee payments. He tried but failed to frustrate the implementation of the Nigerian Mining and Minerals Act through blackmail, threats, and lobbying.
This individual also sponsored Billyamniu Suraj’s latest tirade against the widely-acclaimed 8-point Agenda of the Minister of Solid Minerals Development. Suraj’s statements include unsubstantiated allegations and fabricated falsehoods meant to undermine the ministry’s reforms in the solid minerals sector.
We are proud of journalists who took a look at this piece of calumny, terrorism, and sabotage against a reform package that is being celebrated worldwide and refused to be part of reversing the progressive reforms. The method of corruption employed by the saboteurs in circulating their noxious articles renders hollow their grandstanding as anti-sleaze and exposes their desperation to settle scores at all costs.
These regurgitated lies and repeated innuendoes are feeble reactions to the sturdy reforms outlined in the Seven Point Agenda roadmap to promote the sector’s international competitiveness and local industrialisation. The impact of the reforms can be seen in the prosecution of over 300 suspects of illegal mining by the Mining Marshals, the incorporation of the Nigeria Solid Minerals Company, foreign direct investment into new private mineral processing centres worth over $ 1 billion, and a historic jump in the revenue of the ministry and its agencies. The success of the reforms has encouraged the Federal Government to put the money where the future lies: a whopping N1 trillion budget was allocated to the ministry this year.
We urge readers to see through the pretentious altruism of these venomous hirelings and the threat their propaganda poses to the sustenance of the Renewed Hope Agenda. Deliberately, they present erroneous assumptions about international mining operations and regulations to manipulate less exposed Nigerians into believing that the reform’s policies on legal compliance, such as penalties for dormancy and defaulting on contractual obligations, are not applied in other climes.
For instance, the author lied that revocation of mineral titles for failing to comply with the law is against international investment practices, giving the impression that his sponsors were wrongly penalised. Fact-check it. You will discover that 37 mining licences were revoked in Canada between 2023 and this year. Revocation is also applied in Australia and the United States, where mining is regionally administered. For instance, in the United States, Virginia and Kentucky revoked 20 coal mining licences; New Mexico revoked 10 uranium licences; and the US Forest Service revoked 15 hard rock mining licences in the Rocky Mountains. In Australia, the Western Australian government revoked 20 licences, Queensland revoked 15 licences in the Scenic Rim area, New South Wales revoked 10 licences, and South Australia revoked 5 licences. The United Kingdom was more severe. It banned outright the issuance of new coal licences as part of repositioning the mining sector for renewable energy. In fact, it renamed the Coal Authority as the Remediation Authority.
The saboteurs claim that the increase in regulatory charges is not the norm in foreign jurisdictions because it discourages investment and drives miners out of business. A simple fact check of increases in regulatory charges in foreign mining sectors exposes the falsehood. In the United Kingdom, local authorities and regulatory bodies have implemented fee increases for mineral extraction. The Coal Authority has noted fluctuations in revenues associated with mining licences. In Canada, the Quebec Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources has also implemented fee increases for mining leases and permits, following revisions to the mining regulations. Similarly, the Ontario Ministry of Northern Development, Mines, Natural Resources and Forestry has increased fees over the past two years to cover administrative costs and enhanced regulatory requirements.
There are other blatant lies. The saboteurs fabricated the fiction that the Ministry did not attend the last Africa Down Under conference in Perth, Australia, and deluded themselves that it was due to a phantom court service, despite the glaring fact that the Permanent Secretary, Engr. Faruk Yusuf Yabo led the ministry’s delegation to the event.
The agenda of Suraj and his sponsors is to use the media to harass and arm-twist the ministry into reversing the revocation of licences by hook or by crook. The desperation to disparage the minister as out of sync with the solid minerals sector by casting aspersions on his track record in repositioning the sector is to serve the economic, selfish purpose of reclaiming mineral sites that his sponsor had more than 15 years to mine but woefully failed to do so.
Only a lawless group of unpatriotic agents would argue that companies which default on their legal obligations to the government should be patted on the back, asked to sin no more, and allowed to retain their contracts! In actual fact, besides paying their arrears, they should be tried for economic sabotage. The Nigerian Mining and Minerals Act has been in operation for a decade and a half. It allows licensees to surrender their titles and go home in peace if they couldn’t stand the heat in the regulatory kitchen. Investors who want to profit by cheating the government have no place to hide under the current regime.
In their desperation to muddle facts with fiction and confuse the public, Suraj and his fellow saboteurs chose to play pranks with statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics. They chose the category that relates the contribution of mining and quarrying to the Gross Domestic Product year on year, gloating over the data that it fell to N1.39 trillion, a 21 percent decline from N1.76 trillion in 2023. In this laughable instance of hypertrophy, they deliberately overlooked the data from the same NBS, which noted that the overall growth of the sector rose from 2.84 per cent in 2023 to 4.85 per cent in 2024. Also, that contribution to aggregate GDP rose from 5.56 per cent in 2023 to 5.64 per cent in 2024. And most significantly, they chose to remain blind to the miraculous jump in the contribution of metal ores from N42 billion in 2023 to N103.5 billion in 2024.
The hack’s attack on the Seven Point Agenda is like throwing fluff at an armoured car. The programme is being celebrated locally and globally as the best thing to have happened to the solid minerals sector. Contrary to Suraj’s disinformation, the Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Mr. Dele Alake is receiving accolades at home and abroad for the yeoman’s work of introducing and implementing the programme. Recently, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, the United Kingdom-based Africa Leadership magazine gave him the African Leadership Public Service Excellence Award. Before the ceremony ended, the representative of the State of South Carolina House of Representatives announced and presented a certificate of recognition commending his reforms as Minister of Solid Minerals Development. Indeed, knowing that he rarely has time to travel to collect these awards, organisers aim to secure his presence at international conferences.
Suraj’s failure to pooh-pooh the success of the Seven Point Agenda by pulling the wool over the eyes of his readers landed him in a cul-de-sac of contradictions. In one breath, he alleges that the sanitization of the licensing system has chased investors like his sponsors out of the country. In another breath, he complains that Chinese investors are coming in droves and are so active that they have allegedly created environmental problems. In one breath, he alleges that the new rates have impoverished miners and chased them out of business, yet, in another breath, he complains that the N6.9 billion revenue recorded by MCO and the N7 billion revenue of the Mines Inspectorate in the first half of 2025 masks a “devastating reality”. Are there ghost-investors paying these revenues? In another instance, he recognises the visible impact of the Mining Marshals yet insinuates that their operations are selective!
It is important to alert Suraj and his fellow saboteurs to the thin line between civility and criminality. The Seven-Point Agenda was adopted by the Federal Executive Council as the policy of the Tinubu administration for the solid minerals sector. The Central Delivery Co-ordination Unit of the Presidency monitors and evaluates its delivery every quarter. Last year, the Ministry of Solid Minerals Development was awarded the best in meeting its targets. While patriotic criticisms of its implementation is legitimate, a propaganda campaign that seeks to sabotage the policy through deliberate falsification of facts and disorientation of the public strays into the arena of abuse.
To cloak their bile in the robe of altruism, the hacks glibly referred to corruption in the system without mentioning a single case of connivance or suppression. Throwing wild accusations and allegations without a shred of evidence is, in itself, a crime and would be referred to the appropriate quarters.
The problem is that the particular sponsor of Suraj and his ilk had gotten away with impunity before, so they are unused to lawful ways of doing business. It should be emphasized that a thousand Suraj and their cohorts can never, and will never, stop the reform train in the solid minerals sector. A thousand sponsored hollow media vituperations will never reverse the resolve of this administration in repositioning the sector. They can shout and weep from now till kingdom come. It will all be in vain- like waiting for Godot!
*Bamigbetan is Special Adviser to the Minister of Solid Minerals