Zamfara Professionals League (ZPL) has thanked President Bola Tinubu for reappointing Hajiya Fatimah Shinkafi as the executive secretary of the Solid Minerals Development Fund (SMDF), saying it was essential to retain the current management of the young interventionist body.
The group said the reappointment would enable her to continue working to establish the young financial institution on a solid foundation.
Reacting to the re-appointment, the League said on Sunday that Shinkafi has proven that professionals of Northern origin could perform excellently in the financial sector by building up fragile financial institutions such as the SMDF into a solid intervention platform to solve pertinent national challenges.
It recalled the SMDF’s initiative under Shinkafi to collaborate with the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) to provide funding for early-stage mineral development projects, such as exploration.
According to the ZPL, the project, which attracted 94 applicants in the first year, recorded 14 hopefuls in the second stage of competing for the funds.
The League also highlighted the SMDF’s intervention in projects across the country, which aims to bridge the gap left by junior miners’ absence.
It said extending her term would enable Shinkafi’s administration at the SMDF to execute new projects, such as the gold aggregator scheme, which has yielded billions of naira worth of gold reserves to the Central Bank of Nigeria.
Reacting to allegations of tenure limitation in a newspaper, the League said the provisions of sections 34, 35, and 36 of the Nigerian Mining and Minerals Act do not limit the tenure of the executive secretary, adding that the President acted by the law.
“It is our position that considering the fragile and pioneering status of the SMDF, it will be unwise to hand over to a novice who lacks the institutional memory that has enabled the SMDF to grow its teething years.
“That will disrupt the trail-blazing initiatives of the current administration and cause it to lose focus on its efforts to build a financial intervention agency that must ensure returns on investment,” It said.
