The federal government has signed a memorandum of understanding with a German firm on Nigeria’s $700 million solid mineral deposit.
Minister of solid minerals, Dele Alake disclosed this to State House correspondents after the federal executive council meeting presided over by President Bola Tinubu at the Presidential Villa.
According to him, the German company has the latest top of the line technologies, is a proprietary technology for exploration.
He said “ mine is a way of announcing not FEC approval at all. Yesterday you were all aware and even attended the visit of the German chancellor to our president.
“Of course the German Chancellor came in to strengthen bilateral relations between our two countries, Nigeria and Germany.
“Now for quite a while my ministry has been talking to some highly technical companies in Germany. And since the visit of the German Chancellor yesterday underscored the importance of strengthening bilateral relations especially socio economic bilateral relations.
“I’m happy to announce that the Ministry of Solid Minerals broke a landmark record of signing an MOU with one of the top notch geo-scientific technology companies in the world, which is Geo-scan GmbH, a German company .
“And the company was also in delegation of the German Chancellor yesterday and the MOU was signed yesterday through the SMDF that is the solid minerals development fund.
“And now the significance of this epochal event is that this company has the latest top of the line technologies, is a proprietary technology for exploration.
“It means that you can see deep down up to 10,000 meters for the mineral deposits that are available.
“And if you are vast in the space of solid minerals, you know that it’s exploration, exploitation and extraction and the processes, you would know that exploration is an expensive business. Even the gathering of geo data is very very expensive.
Alake emphasised that the Geo-scan technology is not only more cost-effective but also three times faster in locating mineral deposits compared to current global processes
He added “this particular technology, which is top notch like I said, is 80 per cent cheaper than current processes in the world, is three times faster to locate deposits down on your ground, and so with our own mineral deposits, that we conservatively estimated at about $700 billion under the ground .
“And scrambling to exploit judiciously, we constitute about 0.02 per cent of the global mining budget. And with this $700 billion estimation of our solid minerals deposit, we still have over 90 per cent of the entire landscape of Nigeria unexplored.
“And because it’s an expensive business that underscores the significance of the landmark that we recorded yesterday with the Geo-Scan GmbH, supported also by the German chancellor, supported by our president .
“And I’m happy to tell you now, no kobo commitment on the back of Nigeria. The company will come and establish its technology, its plant here and a move around the country enable us to further explore all other mineral deposits that we have.
“At the end of the day, we cannot begin to put a figure on the amount of solid mineral resources that we have in Nigeria. Lithium for instance.
“Like I said, yesterday, critical minerals, which are called critical metals in international minerals and natural space, are in abundance in Nigeria and right now the global trend is the clamour for climate change. Green transition to green energy, clean energy.
“Now this critical resource that we have in terms of solid minerals is also very significant in the production and manufacturing of electric vehicles, batteries, electronic components, all kinds of top notch technological equipment in today’s world, and we have these things.
He said the MOU signed with Geo-scan GmbH is not only expected to drive solid mineral exploration and exploitation but also contribute substantially to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
“And this will significantly move us forward in achieving the renewable agenda of making solid minerals to become the next petroleum of Nigeria and contributing most significantly to the gross domestic product,” he added .
During his briefing, minister of works, Dave Umahi said his ministry presented a memo for approval on the Coaster roads running from Lagos to Port Harcourt to Cross River.
He also said the Trans-Sahara route, running from Enugu to Cameroon, was approved.
During his briefing, minister of Digital Economy, Tijani Bosun said the government is pushing forward with the agenda to create quality jobs for the nation’s youth.
According to him, at the heart of this agenda is the newly launched “3 Million Technical Talent” program, designed to train and employ millions of young technical professionals over the next four years.
Announced just two weeks ago, he said the program’s initial target was to train 30,000 individuals.
“We’re happy to announce that while we were targeting just 30,000 for the first batch, we’ve actually received over 550,000 applications from across the country. I think the spread in the application is also why we’re extremely excited about this programme.
“So we’ve been in deep conversations with state governors and different partner organizations.
“An announcement was made last week where IHS, one of the local infrastructure companies, committed N1 billion towards the programme.
“We’ve been to states like cross river state, we’ve been engaging states like Kwara state, Ogun state, where we’re looking to share some of the infrastructure in the process of being able to deliver this training programme to this applicant.
I think one thing that is important to note with why we’re doing this is not just another training. We all know that technology under this government is becoming a major part of how we do things, how we reposition public services, but you can’t really leverage technology if you don’t have the talents to drive it.
“So for technology to truly work for Nigeria we need a very deep workforce that can power our ambition, but the beauty also is that the world generally is adopting technology and there’s shortage of people and talent globally for this,” he said
