Mining in Nigeria to witness unprecedented boom with launch of online system – NMCO DG

Mining in Nigeria to witness unprecedented boom with launch of online system – NMCO DG

Story from Abah ADAH, Abuja

The Director General (DG) of the Nigerian Mining Cadastre Office (NMCO), Engineer Simon Obadiah Nkom has expressed the conviction that the Nigerian mining sector is on the path to witnessing an unprecedented boom following the launch of the Electronic Mining Cadastre Plus (eMC+) which officially marks full-scale migration of the licensing operations of his office to an online system.

The MCO boss who made the observation while speaking to newsmen at the 2022 Nigeria Mining Week said the innovation had come with a lot of hope for the sector, particularly as it would avail investors anywhere in the world the opportunity to access the requisite information that would enable them to do the business of mining in the comfort of their country of residence without having to face the challenges of travelling to Nigeria.

The eMC+ was commissioned by President Muhammadu Buhari while declaring open the 2022 and 6th editions of the Nigeria Mining Week in Abuja.

The Chief Administrator of Nigeria’s minerals title explained that the eMC+ is an Electronic Mining Cadastre System developed as part of the office’s upgrade from analogue to digital to enable the office to carry out its mandate of administration and management of mineral titles more efficiently and transparently such that revenue leakages through the activities of illegal miners would be reduced drastically if not checked.

“Initially we had computerised, and now we have migrated to an online system, which simply means that you can stay in any part of the world, you can even use your phone to access this system and by the time you have access to the mining cadastre information, business starts from there in a more transparent manner.

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“We are talking about ease of doing business. We are talking about somebody in Australia or elsewhere around the world that does not really need to spend two days or three days to come to Nigeria to start doing mining business, he can now do so anywhere he is.

“In this way, it will now encourage foreign investment into the sector. More people will be able to now see the transparency and choose Nigeria as their mining destination.

The DG who confessed that he felt so fulfilled by the launch of the eMC+ considering the fact that it has come to challenge him to do more by making his work easier, said that his office is not a chore revenue-generating entity, the revenue generated by the activities of the office in recent years had continued to witness astronomical increase year by year even in spite of the challenges posed by COVID-19 pandemic and other factors.

“I want to tell you that astronomically over the past years, we have had to surpass each year’s revenue irrespective of even the challenges of the pandemic. From 2019 We had an 86% increase in revenue in 2021,” he said.

According to Engineer Nkom, when the Minster of Mines and Steel Development, Arc. Olamilekan Adegbite was quoting the revenue figure from the Ministry in 2021 as over N7 billion, the Mining Cadastre Office was able to contribute over N4 billion.

“So we hope at the end of the day, we’ll continue to be able to add an adequate volume of revenue and even remove the aspect of illegal activities. So there are quite a number of benefits attached to this development, he said.

Also speaking, Mr Francisco Walaner, a former task team leader to Nigeria from the World Bank, who is so the International Peer Reviewer of the eMC+ who corroborated what the DG said explained that theirs as peer reviewers is an independent review of all the workings of the system in order to ensure that it is operational as expected.

“We need to make sure that we are fulfilling international standards and we are ready to attract investors in their own country to look at what is available and start to take decisions.”

According to him, “The case of Nigeria is superior in terms of quality because it has some functionalities that other countries are not contemplating”.