By Yange Ikyaa
The Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Olamilekan Adegbite, has said that Nigeria will exploit its bitumen reserves, estimated at 42.74 billion metric tonnes, in order to help push down the cost of road construction and other civil works in the country.
Adegbite made the disclosure recently in Abuja during a press conference on the “Concession of the Delineated Nigerian Bitumen Blocks,” preparatory to the process of local bitumen production in Nigeria.
He explained that Nigeria had a huge infrastructural deficit with regard to paved roads, saying only about 60,000 km out of 200,000 km of road networks was paved, which presented an inherent demand for bitumen.
“This considerable road infrastructure deficit presents an inherent demand for bitumen. Hence, the development of bitumen will lead to import substitution, local content development and increased value addition of the mining industry to the domestic economy, thereby creating jobs and generating revenue for the government,” he said.
According to him, “once we begin to produce bitumen locally, we will have a stable price that does not fluctuate with the exchange rate.”
Adegbite also said the bitumen in Nigeria is high-grade, easy to mine due to its closeness to the surface, and has attracted many prospective investors.
The World Bank projects that Nigeria’s current urbanization rate of 52 per cent will increase by four per cent annually. Furthermore, 90 per cent of goods, such as food and building materials, are transported by road to meet the demands of this rising population. This will increase demand for road infrastructure and put additional strain on the current road network, resulting in higher demand for asphalt for construction and maintenance.
As a result of this, the country has been making efforts to grow its capacity in the development and consumption of local resources in various sectors of the national economy, even exploiting international partnerships to achieve this.
For instance, on the sidelines of the just concluded Investing in African Mining Indaba in Capetown, South Africa, Nigeria’s Dukia Gold & Precious Metals Refining Company and Philoro Global Trading AG, Switzerland, signed what they called “a Working Together Agreement” to deepen participation in Nigeria’s extractive industry by jointly consolidating strategies in the development of programmes needed to exploit the expected benefits in the sector.
Adegbite said the signature was a simple affair but one with enormous significance, describing it as a major step towards trading of gold and gold products in Nigeria.
His words: “Dukia Gold has been a frontier company blazing trails where other people have been. They have done so much to try and bring the value chain in the gold business, gold assets to ordinary Nigerians. This will further deepen that with Philoro and its experience in this industry, Nigeria will have access to gold assets for investment.
“In this day of instability in currencies and volatility all over the world, gold being a safe haven does not have to be the exclusive of the wealthy and rich. Nigerians can buy gold coins, which they can keep and invest on and trade.
“We are all part of this epoch-making event and I’m happy that we are all here today to witness this symbolic signing ceremony, I hope to see them grow as this business grows and we can all look back some 10 years later and see how far we have come from this simple ceremony.”
The Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Executive Director of Dukia Gold, Paul Beesley, said the objective of the agreement was to bring about the establishment of a precious metals trading programme center in Nigeria to service and support the Nigerian market and potentially use it as a basis to offer similar products to other African markets.
Beesley further explained that the partnership will assist in developing finance and technical support solutions to unlock Dukia Gold’s responsible sourcing of gold strategies, including evaluation and development of new projects and supporting small scale and artisanal mining programmes.
The partnership, he said, would strengthen and expand the Dukia Gold Precious Metals Refinery in support of the goal of being able to aggregate gold from third-party sources in Nigeria and across West Africa, with the ultimate target to produce world class good delivery bars and coins.
According to him, “our commitment to work together with Dukia Gold will further promote and develop other important and relevant opportunities in the precious metals value chain in Nigeria and West Africa, through skills and knowledge transfer, capacity and capability building and the institution of beneficial engagements with host communities.
“These are challenging objectives, but we are confident that with the right relationships and working within the right enabling environment, we can achieve these and more.
“Together with Philoro Global Trading AG, Switzerland, we are embarking on a long-term relationship and will use our combined successes to build and showcase what is possible. These incremental victories then will form the basis for encouraging further expansion of the vision through definitive commitments with other global entities whose capabilities will further add to a more sustainable Precious Metals Mining, Refining & Trading supply chain in Nigeria.”
President of Philoro, Brenner, added that the company was delighted to expand its presence and global vision in Africa through its partnership with the Nigerian company Dukia Gold.
In his own words, “we at Philoro are thus delighted to expand our presence and actualisation of our global vision and objectives in Africa and particularly Nigeria through this Working Together Agreement with Dukia Gold and other identified stakeholders in the Mines to Market initiative. The support, which Dukia Gold has received from, and the commitment of the Minister and the top echelon of the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development to the development of the mining sector in Nigeria are even more reassuring to our further engagements into the African continent.
“Today’s signing is a milestone, but we believe is only a first step in a long relationship between the parties. The presence of the Minister and indeed the ambience of this gathering sends a positive message, that Nigeria is a mining investment destination.”