Nigeria despite having huge deposits of solid minerals, is yet to fully harness this sector for revenue generation.
In its latest report, the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has said, Nigeria made only N496 billion from solid minerals in 13 years.
According to the report published on Sunday, this amount is the revenue generated by the country between 2007 when NEITI commenced reconciliation of payments in the solid minerals sector and 2019.
In 2019, just N79.96 billion was generated by the sector, which contributed 0.26 per cent to gross domestic product that year. The states shared N5.1 billion of this amount, higher than N2.1 billion shared in 2018. N1.16 billion was distributed to solid minerals producing states sharing as 13per cent derivation.
“Nigeria’s GDP in 2019 was ₦144.210 trillion with contributions from the solid minerals sector totalling ₦368.99 billion, representing 0.26 percent of the total amount,” the report said.
“This shows a steady growth in the sector’s contribution to the economy in the past five years, from a contribution of 0.12 percent in 2015 to 0.26 percent in 2019.”
According to the report, of 702 companies that paid royalties to the government in 2019, only 74 companies paid N3 million and above.
“These 74 companies accounted for 87.63 percent of total royalties of N2.50bn paid in 2019, with the top 5 companies (Dangote Cement PLC; Lafarge PLC; Dangote Industries; Julius Berger; and Reynolds Construction) paying more than 50 percent of total royalties,” the report stated.
The report further revealed that in 2019, a total of 1,296 mineral permits were issued by the Mining Cadastre Office (MCO) with Small Scale Mining Leases having the highest with 602 permits granted.
This was followed by Exploration Licenses and Quarry Leases with 501 and 169 respectively, while Mining Leases had the least figure of 24.
The total volume of minerals produced in 2019 was 59.82 metric tonnes, according to the report.
Also, of the total exports of N24.275 trillion by the country for 2019, the solid minerals sector accounted for N124.23 billion representing just 0.51 per cent of total export for the year.
