The Social Democratic Party presidential candidate in the 2023 election, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has expressed concerns that the looting and amount lost to illegal mining are far higher than the country’s entire budget.
Adebayo raised the alarm on Sunday’s edition of Channels Television’s Politics Today.
Nigeria has been experiencing booming illegal mining activities, especially in Bukkuyum and Anka local government areas in present-day Zamfara State, in the past two decades.
In July 2024, the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Solid Minerals, Jonathan Gbefwi, announced that illegal mining is costing the country about $9bn annually.
The lawmaker further lamented that only three per cent of royalty gets paid into government coffers by the few miners licenced to operate legally across the country.
On Sunday, Adebayo also shared the same sentiment, stressing that the country is seriously bleeding and experiencing some form of leakages in the sector.
He queried, “Did you notice that Dele Alake has been quiet recently? He needs to tell us how he has improved the revenue from solid minerals. This is because what he managed to do was to raise tariffs from licence and miners and create some regulatory pushbacks for us.
“However, illegal mining is still thriving. I can tell you that the amount of money stolen from illegal mining right from Zamfara to Osun, Ebonyi and Nasarawa here is far more than the entire budget they are writing now.”
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