The Federal of Nigeria has revoked the mining license of 924 dormant mineral mining licensees who commercializes and failed to pay statutory charges and dues to the federal government of Nigeria through the Mining Cadastral Office (MCO).
Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dr. Oladele Alake who gave the directive at a press briefing in Abuja on Wednesday stated that revoking the licenses was expedient as Nigeria cannot continue to suffer low investment on account of nefarious activities of persons who buy licenses from government, resell it or leave the site dormant.
Alake noted that the move to revoke the licenses was important due to licences racketeering thereby creating a secondary black market to pawn mineral licenses noting that the amount at which these licenses are sold are so huge compared to their cost such that funds which could have been used to initiate serious exploration and mining activities are spent on speculators.
He added that in view of due adherence to due process and fair consideration with the standard policy of use it or lose it, the licenses revoked include 528 exploration licenses, 20 mining leases, 101 quarry licenses and 273 small scale mining licences.
He noted that investors across the globe are now free to apply for any of the affected cadastral units on the basis of first come, first served adding that the decision will sanitize the licencing system by penalizing those who have commercialized the opportunities offered by the sector into a bazzar.
Meanwhile, Alake stated that the government has made a policy for defaulters who wishes to make restitution to government in concentration of their reinstatement would pay a stipulated fine depending on the license that was revoked.
“We have here now issued a policy of allowing those whose licenses were revoked to
make restitution to government in concentration of their reinstatement. And the
restitution is also graduated depending on the type of license that was revoked.
“The highest, which is the mining license, will attract a restitution to the federal
government of 10 million per license, per revoked license. Whoever wants to go back to
that site or to have his revoked license reinstated must make restitution to the federal
government of Nigeria by paying a fine of 10 million naira to the government.
For
the small-scale licenses, it will be 7.5 million restitution or fine for restatement and for the exploration license, it will be 5 million for restatement And that would affect
even those ones that have just been revoked now. This new policy would also affect
those that have just been revoked and of course those that were revoked November last
year.” He added.