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.
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