Faking Finance: Alake’s Minerals Mirage By Biliyaminu Suraj

Dele Alake 
Minister of Solid Minerals Development 

"The Minister’s comments bear little resemblance to the real situation on the ground." Biliyaminu Suraj.

..... "The increase in revenue to the MCO can be largely attributed to the astronomical increase in fees which are driving small Nigerian miners out of the sector or into illegal mining. With illegal mining comes a return to escalating insecurity."

Here’s the illusion explained by Nigeria’s Minister for Solid Minerals: “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.”

According to Minister Alake, in the first quarter of 2025, two regulatory agencies, the Mining Cadastral Office (MCO) and the Mines Inspectorate recorded ₦6.9 billion and ₦7 billion in revenue, respectively.

The Minister projected 2026 to be a record-breaking one for the sector, noting that the current budget allocates ₦1 trillion for mineral exploration, targeted at generating internationally certified geological data.

“Exploration is key. When we came in, Nigeria had spent just $2 million on exploration, compared to $40 million in Sierra Leone, $148 million in Côte d’Ivoire, and over $300 million in South Africa. No serious investor will touch your sector without credible data,” he said. Well, he is right about that to some degree. But there are other factors far more significant to a potential investor in mining.

As part of his seven-point agenda, the Minister said he has taken aggressive steps to curb illegal mining and formalise artisanal activity. He noted that over 300 illegal miners were arrested last year, 150 prosecutions are ongoing, and nine convictions have been secured, including foreign nationals.

“We adopted both kinetic and non-kinetic strategies (that is a term usually applied to warfare and used by the Minister to describe his approach to the mining sector). 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.

The Minister said Nigeria now chairs the newly formed African Mineral Strategy Group, a continental bloc focused on ensuring local value addition and fairer mineral trade deals across Africa. Minister Alake is the Chairman. This is China’s trojan horse to have access to Africa’s minerals wealth on terms favourable to China and African elite who control and facilitate that access.

 “This was a direct result of Nigeria’s position at the 2024 Future Minerals Conference in Riyadh. We’re leading Africa in saying: no more raw material exports without domestic beneficiation.” A fine ideal but the value of China’s downstream processing efforts in Nigeria’s lithium sector are highly exaggerated by the Minister and very inefficient. To date no major Western mining company has invested in Nigeria’s mining sector.

Yet the Minister extols “the rising investor confidence” noting that top global players, including UK, US, Saudi Arabia, and UAE officials, have expressed interest in Nigeria’s lithium and other critical minerals. That is indeed true. Interest has been expressed but the elephant in the room is the lack on security of title, the dysfunctional MCO cadastre, the continuous illegal grant of licences over the top of valid licences, the lack of access to tenements due to armed illegal miners in occupation, and the list goes on.

If you want the Mines Marshalls to attend to an issue of illegal mining on your tenements then you better be prepared to pay more than the illegals are prepared to pay.

Tenement holders with valid licences are being ejected by the Civil Defence Corps who then escort Chinese miners to take over the site and commence mining without any licence.

The Minister’s comments bear little resemblance to the real situation on the ground.

The increase in revenue to the MCO can be largely attributed to the astronomical increase in fees which are driving small Nigerian miners out of the sector or into illegal mining. With illegal mining comes a return to escalating insecurity.

In Nigeria’s North ISWAP’s funding based has expanded through the collection of taxes on farmers. In similar fashion Boko Haram and its regional affiliates have discovered a new racket … an informal licence fee to permit mining to continue. Boko Haram and ISIS affiliated groups are now demanding payment from local miners as “protection” to allow miners to continue their operations. The Minister’s Mines Marshalls and MCO staff will not send staff to check these areas, so a growing number of mining fields are coming under the control of non-state armed groups.

The Minister’s figures are simply an illusion which covers the increasing insecurity which is a perfect screen for a return to illegal mining and Chinese exploitation without any accountability or regulation. As with all mirages, the closer one gets to the mirage the clearer the reality becomes until at last the mirage disappears and the oasis is just another sand dune.

biliyasuraj247@yahoo.com