Kayode Fayemi

By Kayode Fayemi

For several decades, policy makers and observers warned that Nigeria’s continued dependence on oil as the mainstay of her economy was bound to jeopardize her long term economic growth and development. International financial institutions, development partners and knowledgeable experts at home were all in agreement that our overreliance on crude oil was an unsustainable strategic weakness.

Between 1973 and 1978, during the oil boom, oil revenue rose quickly to more than 90 percent of Nigeria’s revenue. This increase was matched by an increase in public expenditure which quadrupled between 1973 and 1975.[1] Prior to the war, regions had run tax-based economies and enabled growth by leveraging comparative advantage largely in agriculture. The new centrality of oil wealth altered everything. The verdict of history is that Nigeria remorselessly squandered her oil boom turning an opportunity to become an economic superpower into an age of extravagant waste almost unparalleled in the annals of developing countries. By the early 1980s, Nigeria was gravely indebted, having borrowed against future oil revenues. The government was effectively bankrupt.

Subsequent oil booms were rendered inconsequential by the scale of official graft for which Nigeria had by then become legendary. In the field of development studies, Nigeria is one of the archetypal poster children for what has been called the Dutch disease or the resource curse. It has been proven that resource-rich economies tend to grow more slowly than other poor countries. This phenomenon called the ‘Dutch disease’, is the name scholars gave to the difficulties that befell the Netherlands after its discovery of gas in the North Sea.

It is also known as ‘the curse of oil’. When a nation discovers oil reserves in her territory, the sudden avalanche of petrodollars causes the neglect of sectors like agriculture and manufacturing thus leaving oil to dominate the economy. With so much money being made without much exertion, the urge to create wealth and value diminishes as everyone focuses their attention on how to get a piece of the fabled national cake. Oil wealth brings along with it the illusion of an infinitely abundant resource and with this also comes a culture of fiscal irresponsibility, official extravagance and outright theft when not properly managed.

In 2006, the World Bank disclosed that Nigerian officials had stolen more than $300 billion of the country’s wealth over the past 40 years. This amounts to a sum equivalent to 300 years of British aid for the entire continent of Africa. It also amounts to six times the American help given to rebuild post-war Europe under the Marshall Plan. Over the past one year as this administration has set about implementing our agenda of sustainable change, the scale of the challenge posed by corruption has become obvious. Various scandals of public theft have surfaced alerting us to the numerous ways in which our collective patrimony has been despoiled by those we entrusted with its custodianship.

These sums, while astronomical, also now sadly lack shock value. They are symbolic of the routinization of graft in a context in which public funds are perceived both to be infinite and to belong to no one because they cannot be related to any tangible productive endeavour. This sort of disconnection is symptomatic of the curse of oil. The lack of civic outrage over these disclosures is simply because over time sensational media reportage has desensitized us to the true cost of pervasive graft. It is also because a political economy based on the extraction of crude oil and the distribution of oil rents has little room to accommodate proper relations between citizens, resources and the administrators charged with managing those resources for the common good.

The End of Oil

We are now facing a future in which crude oil either ceases to be a strategic resource or one in which our status as a producer becomes irrelevant to our prospects for economic advancement within the international economic environment.

We live in a world in which new technologies, such as fracking, have unleashed a dynamic of resource abundance rather than resource scarcity and which is resulting in less power concentrated in the hands of a few suppliers. Previously import-dependent consumers like the US are increasingly on the cusp of energy self-sufficiency. By 2013, the US, a major importer of Nigerian crude, had already reduced the importation of Nigerian oil to 300, 000 barrels from 1.1 million.[5] In 2014 that figure plunged to zero. Even before this technological shift occurred, we had already ceased to be Sub-Saharan Africa’s sole energy power house. New players like Ghana, Kenya and Liberia have emerged to add to the competition in the market.

At the same time, the naira is suffering its sharpest decline in recent years. This decline is a consequence of the decrease in our external reserves, the sharpest drop in crude oil prices since 2008 and an ultimately logical vulnerability of an economy that is too one-dimensional and insufficiently versatile to absorb global price shocks.

I have given this overview of the definitive megatrends of this era so as to give us a proper context within which to assess the efforts of the current administration. It is clear that we have come into office at a time of disruptive and disorienting change. Fundamental changes are necessary and things can no longer be business as usual. The conventional wisdom that has governed the way we have conducted politics and run our economy for decades is no longer useful. In a sense, we are now in uncharted waters.

For years, successive administrations have talked about the need to diversify the economy, moving it away from overreliance on crude oil exports. For years, this has remained just talk rather than an urgent imperative that should drive policy-making. At the moment, the collapse of global oil prices which has led to a fiscal crisis means that governments at all levels are struggling to finance capital projects and sustain recurrent expenditure. But our reaction to these facts should not be despondency. The current convergence of adverse trends is providing us with the incentives to execute just such a shift. We may be in a season of adversity and austerity but there is also abundant opportunity. These hardships should spur us to seek innovative solutions and new ways and means of driving sustainable growth. We now have no alternative but to go beyond lip service pronouncements and begin to take the diversification of our economy seriously.

The Case for Solid Minerals

Mr. President has often said that he wants the sector to be a key source of economic growth and diversified revenue base for Nigeria. Indeed, he has stated clearly that our goal is to build a more diversified economy in which oil remains important, but its share of the overall portfolio of revenue sources declines as the whole pie grows bigger. The recently approved Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and the Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) emphasizes the place of solid minerals in the economic growth strategy of the country.

One fact that we must accept is that oil wealth has made us lazy and unimaginative given the bountiful resources with which Nigeria is blessed. As the minister in charge of the solid minerals sector, I am in a position to offer insights into what I believe to be Nigeria’s next frontier of opportunity. Our fixation on crude oil has blinded us to the immense scale of riches we have in this sector and their potential to power a new age of economic growth.

Nigeria’s natural resource portfolio has at least 44 known mineral assets that include precious minerals, base metals, bulk minerals and what are known as rare earth minerals. More specifically, our most promising mineral assets include gold, iron ore, barite, bitumen, lead, zinc, tin and coal. We have good reason to believe that the available data of our reserves understates what our country has been blessed with by providence in many instances. For one thing, some of the geosciences data collected 50 years ago or earlier have not been updated, so we are cautiously optimistic that our mineral endowments actually exceed what is currently stated.

Before the advent of Oil production in Nigeria, during the colonial era and up to the first decade after independence, Nigeria progressively carried out extensive geological surveys and had a good idea the extent of our minerals reserves. Whether it was coal, iron ore, gold, or tin, a clear view of what Nigeria had was available. In addition, we had a clear plan for putting such natural assets to work alongside private enterprise. The proceeds of such enterprise was put to work building some of the first public infrastructure in Nigeria, just as agricultural proceeds from cocoa was used to finance education and infrastructure in western Nigeria.

Today, however, based on current data, Nigeria’s solid minerals sector only makes up about 0.34% of gross domestic product (GDP). While that is significant, it is much smaller than its true potential as the vast majority of our mining assets have yet to be exploited. To put this figure in a broader context, we should note that solid minerals account for about 9 percent of South Africa’s GDP, while mineral revenues is projected to account for 34.4% of Botswana’s total revenue in 2015/2016, and about 30% of GDP[6]. Therefore, it would be accurate to say that Nigeria’s solid minerals sector has more or less been operating sharply below capacity, with many mining operations manned by small scale artisanal miners, as opposed to the large scale actors.

According to one of the major stakeholders in the solid minerals sector, the Association of Metal Exporters of Nigeria, we can generate at least N5 trillion annually from mining and exporting of its vast solid mineral deposits, with several multiplier effects on job creation, state development and social infrastructure that could position the solid minerals sector as the main catalyst for national development. Only two days ago, I was in Ilorin, Kwara state with the Vice President to witness the foundation laying for another steel plant in Nigeria.

My predecessors as ministers since 1999 made tremendous efforts to shift the sector from a state-led orientation to a more efficient private sector-led sector with clear guiding laws, regulations and activities. Their reform efforts crystallized in the Nigerian Minerals and Mining Act of 2007, a sound piece of legislation with built-in globally competitive incentives. Nigeria is once again on the path to providing a transparent and workable regulatory and policy environment for private sector led mining. And companies have started responding to all the efforts made by my predecessors. Today we have companies such as Tongyi Allied Mining, Dangote Group, Segilola Gold, Kogi Iron Mines, Multiverse Resources, Kas Industries, and Australian Mines Ltd etc. blazing the trail in the mining sector. We also look forward to welcoming more companies into the sector.

Today, the Nigerian mining industry faces external and internal challenges. Chief among the external challenges is the turmoil besetting the global mining market as key sources of demand that supported prices over the past two decades have declined. The continuous global decline in prices of mining products has put mines and mining houses under immense pressure. This is reflected in the sharp decline in the share prices of major industry players such as Glencore, Anglo-American and Rio Tinto for example.

Naturally, as the prices of metals and their assets plunge, many of the top mining houses are pulling back from investment planning, shutting down mines and optimizing current operations. All mining now has to be cost and process efficient.

For Nigeria, this trend makes attracting the large houses in the current time frame quite challenging. But even in this difficulty, there is also great opportunity. We have therefore crafted a strategy to reflect a need to jumpstart market growth using a blend of domestic mining houses, junior mining companies and large global miners. The good news for Nigeria is that we have tremendous domestic demand for industrial minerals and metals – in the construction industry for example, so we will be focusing on working with other key MDAs to ensure that demand is met by Nigerian miners and processors.

Our internal challenges consist mainly of limited or inadequate infrastructure which makes it difficult for Nigeria to export iron ore for example; obsolete geological data; archaic mining techniques and processes; illegal artisanal mining activities; weak institutional capacity that has traditionally hampered my ministry’s discharge of its regulatory mandate; and insufficient funds to drive development in the sector; and the enduring perception of Nigeria as a particularly high-risk business environment. We are presently aggressively tackling all these challenges from working with the National Assembly to receive the right budgetary provisions, and seeing to the recruitment of top quality technical experts to drive our work, to ensuring expansion in bulk handling terminals at multiple river and ocean ports. We are also leveraging technology using web applications to carry out different scenario based analyses on existing geo-databases to generate regional based potential ‘Mineral Resource Corridor Complexes’. These geo-databases incorporate datasets based on various features – mineral resources, mineral lease holdings, landuse and landcover, infrastructure details, socio-economic data e.t.c. The outcome of this presents an opportunity for stakeholders at the regional level to cooperate in optimally exploiting their mineral resources. I can therefore affirm that the sector is now fully open for new businesses while we work on strengthening a functional mineral resource development ecosystem.

The Imperative of Regional Cooperation

Why is this sector so important to our economic growth going forward? For one thing, unlike crude oil distributes which are distributed in somewhat limited measure across our terrain, solid mineral deposits are far more evenly spread out across our country. In other words, the solid minerals sector has the potential to supply that rising economic tide that will lift all our boats.

According to the resource audit findings by the National Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI), solid mineral deposits are scattered all over Nigeria, with more deposits in certain areas than others. Over 40 million tonnes of talc deposits have been identified in Niger, Osun, Kogi, Ogun and Kaduna states. There are huge deposits of coal ranging from bituminous to lignite in the Anambra Basin of South-Eastern Nigeria. There are lead-zinc ores within the Asaba Area of Niger Delta, while tin, niobium, and lead, are to be found around Oyo and Igbeti, with as much as over a billion tonnes of gypsum spread around Sokoto, Niger, Ondo and Ekiti states.

Nigeria’s potentially most beneficial solid minerals are spread around the nation. Limestone deposits occur in Cross River, Ogun, Benue, Gombe, Ebonyi, Sokoto, Edo and Kogi states; magnesite in Adamawa and Kebbi states; coal in Enugu, Imo, Kogi, Delta, Plateau, Anambra, Abia, Benue, Edo, Ondo, Bauchi, Adamawa and Kwara states; wolframite in Kano, Kaduna, Bauchi and Niger states; silver is found in Kano, with kyanite in Kaduna and Niger states; manganese in the Northern states of Kebbi, Katsina and Zamfara with diatomite found in Yobe State, while ilmenite-rutile is found in Bauchi, Plateau and Kaduna states; fluorite is found in Taraba State with gold in Niger, Kebbi, Kaduna, Kogi, Kwara and Zamfara, Osun states and Oyo states.

Nassarawa State in the North has been appropriately tagged as Nigeria’s home of Solid Minerals. The state is one of the most naturally endowed states in Nigeria in terms of the availability of economically and commercially viable natural resources. These include clay, columbite, ilmenite, mica, barytes, pyrite, galena, limestone, sodium chloride, ephalerite, silica sand, granites, tantalite, mica, sphalerite, talc, gemstone (tourmaline, aquamarine and sapphire), halcopyrite, topaz, cassiterite, columbite, tantalite, emerald, heliodor, amethyst, quartz, coking coal, marble, and iron ore. Bauchi is another richly endowed state in the North with metal ores, non-metallic ores and gemstones. Other untapped mineral resources in Bauchi include kaolin, talc, tin, quartz, iron ore, gypsum, zircon, calcite, tantalite, chalcoprite, mica, copper ore, limestone, tourmaline, beryl, garnet, columbite, muscovite, aquamarine, topaz, marble, bismuth, wolfromite and others.

There is ample geological evidence that confirms a truth we have always intuited – that every zone, region and state in Nigeria has something to bring to the national table of resource riches. The task now is to effectively administer them for the good of all Nigerians.

The main factors that militate against states being able to appropriate and exploit these resources are rooted in our constitutional architecture which centralizes control over subsoil resources in the federal government. Not only does this feature negate the principle of subsidiarity which would have allowed states to fully explore their economic potential; it means that there are no real incentives for states to become involved in mining because taxes and royalties do not accrue directly to states but to the federal government. This grossly limits the capacity of states to boost their internally generated revenue. There is a broad consensus that this arrangement requires reform. A key objective of such envisaged reform would see the transfer of mines and minerals from the exclusive legislative list and therefore exclusive federal jurisdiction to the concurrent legislative list where states can exercise greater jurisdiction than is presently the case.

Notwithstanding these constraints, and while we continue to advocate for greater decentralization of economic levers as contained in the APC manifesto, states still have latitude to work within or around the current institutional parameters. For example, states can set up mining joint ventures, special purpose vehicles that couple federal interest with private investment and regional investment concerns.

The distribution of mineral resources defies political boundaries. Often the occurrence of natural resource deposits cuts across state and even regional boundaries. This means that it is absolutely imperative for states to establish forums of regional cooperation in order to exploit the commercial potential of the resources in their domains. Take nearby Ilesha which has proven deposits of gold. Those deposits belong to a rich vein that cuts across states in the southwest and in the north-west zones. If the states with this vein are to fully benefit from their resources, they must create frameworks of regional economic cooperation and regional resource corridors. In this way, nature itself points us towards the necessity of cooperation if we are all to fully benefit from the resources she has so generously deposited in our land. There is a clear case to be made that such joint ventures represent a win-win situation for all of us. If the age of crude oil was the age of zero-sum winner-takes-all thinking, this current age should be an age of cooperation and mutual progress.

Transformation can only come from a deep seated commitment to re-engaging at the regional level. Bureaucracies that have been duplicated should be stepped down. Costs that have been replicated multiple times without a commensurate increase in value created surely cannot be a rationale answer. Only closer regional integration at the cost, revenue and upside level will work. Yes as a region, we in the Southwest can speak of our joint interest in working together and can point to concrete steps we have taken in this direction, but we certainly can do much more.

Paradigm Shift in Natural Resource Governance

As we prepare to inaugurate a new chapter in the annals of our nation’s economic history, we must ensure that we learn lessons from the previous age of extractive activities and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. Our national misadventures with crude oil and natural gas offer so many lessons on how not to go about extractive economic activities. Improper stewardship of our oil resources over the course of fifty years has left a terrible legacy of corruption, communal discontent and disillusionment, poverty and ecological degradation, resource micro-nationalism and anti-state violence.

The tragic consequences of unregulated resource exploitation in the Niger Delta have been well documented. Gas flaring is generally discouraged and condemned by the international community as it contributes greatly to climate change. Nigeria contributes about 13 percent of the gas flared globally every year. Ironically, the most devastating effects of climate change will be felt by developing countries like Nigeria. The quantum of gas that is wasted could earn Nigeria more than $500 million annually.The World Bank estimates that gas flared in Nigeria is equivalent to the total annual power generation in sub-Saharan Africa whereas the same gas if properly harnessed could be used to power Nigeria and the West African sub-region.

The cost of gas-flaring goes is not only un-economic; gas flaring releases a variety of toxic chemicals into the atmosphere. By-products of combustion include nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, volatile organic compounds like benzene, toluene as well as carcinogens. Humans exposed to such substances can suffer a variety of respiratory problems, which have been reported among many children in the delta, but have apparently gone uninvestigated.

The Niger Delta has suffered the spillage of 546 million gallons of oil over the past fifty years or nearly 11 million gallons a year. Reckless extractive activities have despoiled a region with most of Africa’s mangroves and which has fed southern Nigeria’s interior with its wealth of fish, shellfish, wildlife and crops.

Against the background of this tragedy, ecological justice is one of the major planks of our approach to the development of the solid minerals sector. We will ensure that investors comply with global best practices in resource extraction by integrating all relevant protocols on environmental conservation in the conduct of mining and all related business. This approach is informed by our belief that the environment itself is a resource and has to be safeguarded even as we unearth its more obvious treasures. Our goal is to provide a better deal for the local communities where these minerals are located, ensuring communal buy-in and benefit.

To this end, we are executing a departure from the perception of resource-rich locales as extractive farms and a shift towards value-added economic activities. The idea is to explore the full spectrum of economic endeavours that can be derived from the efficient utilization of these resources. No longer will our communities simply be used and dumped or serve as mere sites for extraction. For the new resource economy to benefit our people, we intend to take an activist posture towards issues of developing local content and ensuring a transfer of skills and technology that will be to our nation’s advantage in the medium and long term. While we are committed to maintaining a liberal business environment, we are also mindful that the new resource economy results in a win-win situation for all stakeholders. This is why we intend to see to it that host communities are directly and positively impacted by the activities that will be undertaken in their domains.

The government and the private sector will share the responsibility of investing in key drivers of success such as geosciences data that investors need, the appropriate infrastructure such as railways and bulk ports, mine security networks, specialized technical talent and top class regulatory and enforcement capacity.

I am pleased to report that we now have a roadmap for the sector, drawn from the insights and perspectives of many industry actors and which captures all these issues and concerns in the policy framework. This roadmap is now presently undergoing a process of stakeholder scrutiny and feedback to make it even more robust. Based on the road map, we expect that mining will start to blossom over the coming decade, putting the sector on a path to unlocking its full potential. Whether it is new jobs, new bulk terminals to export ores, or processing plants for granite or manganese, we expect growth in the sector. But we cannot do it alone.

We need support from the grassroots and states to implement our ideas. States and local government teams need to become partners in our journey to create sustainable prosperity in Nigeria. Whether it is in rapidly approving certificates of occupancy, or fixing rural infrastructure, we need all hands on deck to reshape Nigeria, our states and our communities.

It is that testimonial to hope that is at the heart of our party’s promise to Nigerians. The APC to which I belong is a true believer in utilizing the nation’s natural and cultural heritage to transform the fortunes of Nigerians. Whether it is mining resources, agricultural lands, tourism sites such as Osun Oshogbo or eternal values that have acted as a compass for our choices, our heritage has not been fully utilized. We must now pay homage to history by applying ourselves to the utmost degree possible in order to unlock our immense national potential.

At this point I would like to register an important caveat. The solid minerals sector is definitely a frontier of opportunity, some would say, the frontier of opportunity in the new economic reality in which we find ourselves. Despite those who suggest that we are about to witness a gold rush or a fantastic resource boom that will channel untold wealth into some pockets, I must suggest that we moderate our expectations within the context of prevailing realities. The reality is that there is a worldwide slump in commodity prices occasioned by the slowdown in economic growth of resource-hungry giants like China and India, the two biggest markets for commodities over the past ten years. Besides the greatest resource of any nation is its human capital and the creativity and innovation exhibited by the people. The adaptive capacity of our population is what will ultimately set us apart even if there is a lot to benefit from our natural endowments in Nigeria.

There are economies of scale that shape the dynamics of the global commodity markets that we must take cognizance of. For instance, the current troubles of the British steel industry and the fact that costs are so high that commodity steel can no longer be produced competitively in Western Europe are trends we must take note of as we contemplate our own steel dreams in Nigeria. These facts should also serve to rapidly dispel any notions of instant wealth flowing into our coffers as a result of a solid minerals boom.

However, as stated earlier, there is a huge internal demand for our resources which we intend to address. Our ambition goes beyond extraction and exportation. It is to create a globally competitive sector capable of contributing to wealth creation, creating jobs and advancing our social and human security. We will achieve this by focusing on using our mining assets to initially drive domestic industrialization and migrate to competing in global markets. In other words, our focus is inward. In tandem with the administration’s goal of reducing an import bill that depletes our foreign exchange reserves, import substitution is very much a big factor in how we intend to drive developments in the sector.

By all means let us invest in the solid minerals sector but with an eye on long term human capital development rather than instant gratification. This calls for a posture of strategic patience on the part of investors and stakeholders. This is the story of our founding fathers and this is what we must seek to replicate and expand. The fundamentals of the sector are in our favour, the long term benefits undeniable. Our reward is sure.

In concluding, as we celebrate our dear Chief John Agboola Odeyemi today, a most befitting way to honour him and his legacy is to let this moment mark our bold step towards transformational change, leaving behind the horrors of poor choices, and embracing a new history forged in the crucible of knowledge drawn from our elders. For indeed, as the old Yoruba proverb tells us, omode gbon, agba gbon, la fi da Ile-Ife. Let us today, build a new metaphorical Ile Ife on the wisdom of the young and old, and craft a new narrative of Nigeria forged in our cultural legacy and financed by the smart use of our natural assets in a new competitive federal system, so the eyes of patriots like Chief Odeyemi and others of his generation will see the first fruits of a greater Nigeria in their lifetime.

Speech by Dr. Kayode Fayemi, Minister of Solid Minerals Development
at the 3rd Chief (Dr) John Agboola Odeyemi annual lecure in Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria on Friday 29 April 2016