Warns bandits to keep off
By Gabriel Ewepu – Abuja
The Federal Government, on Wednesday, assured protection of gold deposits, investors, and miners in Nasarawa State and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
between content ad –>
The assurance was made by the Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Arc Olamilekan Adegbite, while receiving the Governor of Nasarawa State, Engr Abdullahi Suleiman, at the Ministry’s Headquarters in Abuja.
Adegbite who was excited over the discovery of commercial gold deposits in the Nasarawa-Abuja axis under the National Integrated Mineral Exploration Project, NIMEP, undertaken by the Ministry, revealed that the NIMEP project had cost the Ministry N15 billion, and that has generated troves of important geoscience data seriously needed to change the narrative in the industry, which also foreign investors are excited about the juicy mining prospects it had indicated as contained in a statement signed by the Special Assistant on Media to the Minister, Ayodeji Adeyemi.
He said: “It is a pleasure to receive the Governor of Nasarawa State in my office today and this should not be a surprise because Nasarawa State is the home of solid minerals in the country.
“We had an earlier discussion about recent discoveries of precious minerals along the Nasarawa, Abuja axis.
“As you probably might be aware, we have been talking about this for a while, there is a programme we call NIMEP executed by the ministry were government has put about N15 billion into exploration for minerals, one of which is gold, and we have done this exploration over the country and have discovered a very nice track of gold deposits especially between Abuja and Nasarawa were we share borders.
“We know that gold mining attracts a lot of undesirables. Wherever this people smell gold, if I may use the word smell, whenever they have inkling that there is gold, it somehow attracts these undesirable elements.
“It always follows that we have illegality developing around…
Read the full article at www.vanguardngr.com
