Adebite calls for greater efforts, service delivery among agencies and Departments in mining sector

Energy

…backs Aword of digital innovation

Favour Ishember, Abuja

In a bid to achieve greater success in the industry, the Honorable Minister of

Mines and Steel Development, Architect Olamilekan Adegbiteh has aurged agencies and departments in the ministry to boost their efforts in service delivery.

The Minister gave this charge as he received an award from the Director-General, Nigeria Mining Cadastre Office (MCO), Mr Obadiah Nkom , for the greatest digital innovation in the Federal Government category for the year 2022.

While all of the Ministry’s agencies have done an excellently in carrying out their obligations, Adebite believes that additional efforts are needed to implement President Muhammadu Buhari’s diversification policy.

He also praised the MCO for making the Ministry proud by winning first place in the Federal Government category for digital innovation in 2022.ng.

It would be recalled that MCO was recently awarded the best in digital innovation in the Federal Government category by the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA) for the year 2022.ng.

NiRA is a non-governmental organization entrusted with managing Nigeria’s country code top-level domain (ccTLD), dot.ng, which was formed in 2005 by the order of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

He said that MCO had gone through a lot in ensuring that the sector moved from analogue to digital to compete with the international standard.

“MCO has come a long way from the days of analogue record taking, issuance of licences among others but the office is now operating online; everything is now conducted online”

MCO has also recorded a giant stride in terms of revenue generation every year for the Federal Government, this is worth commending,” he said.

The minister said that the success recorded by MCO recently was a result of the N30 billion mining intervention given to the sector in 2017 by the Federal Government.

According to him:” This is the first time our ministry is enjoying some funding that we never had. The has an extra-budgetary value which was given to us out of the natural resources of 30 Billion was granted in 2017.

“We also have the World Bank facilitated projects loan. With the combination of the two funding helped us to where we are today.

Adegbite said that the ministry was able to support the MCO from the fund to upscale its activities.

He said that the ministry had also achieved success by investing part of the fund to generate mineral data.

“We have made huge success too in mineral data collection, we are at a point now that the sector is getting attention internationally.

“Just recently, I approved the sales of some of the data to mining investors and many more are still coming for data; we are creating a special account for the sales of data” he said.

Earlier, the Permanent Secretary, Mines and Steel Development, Dr Oluwatoyin Akinlade said it is gratifying that MCO is rated the best in digital innovation among the Federal establishment of Nigeria for the year 2022 by the Nigeria Internet Registration

She congratulated the Director General and the staff for attaining this feat. This accomplishment did not come without challenges but challenges must not deter us, instead, should spur us to develop innovative ideas for achieving our targets.

Further more, Nkom appreciated the minister and the permanent secretary for the support given to MCO to operate and compete at the international level.

According to him, MCO will continue in this trend to lead Nigeria into highly prosperous mining industry.

The MCO was nominated by the public and assessed by the Award Jury as it fulfilled the criteria for the category.

Impressively, he said, MCO also competed with other nominees such as Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC), Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and National Pension Commission (PENCOM) and emerged the winner with the highest votes.

Adebite calls for greater efforts service delivery among agencies and Departments in mining sector