[caption id="attachment_68205" align="alignright" width="640"] Dr Kayode Fayemi[/caption] Dr Kayode Fayemi, Minister for Solid Minerals and Steel Development, has a big assignment. He is to revive the dead mining sector and make it an alternative revenue source for the Federal Government. Nigeria has never, in its history, been in need of diversification like this! This is because, given the activities of militants in the Niger Delta (who bombed pipelines with no more efforts than stepping on maggots), which affected oil outputs and the fall in its price in the world market, revenue from that sector plumetted. The minister, therefore, is like one of the doctors who have been assigned to revive a patient in a coma and make him his family’s bread winner again in a short time. Apart from this, he is to see to it that despite that mining is on the exclusive list, inividuals and states can legitimately make money through it. In his words: “We need to bridge the gap between law and reality and that is why we decided that we must help those informal miners (as we call them) to become formalized and we must support them with access to finance, tools, technical knowledge, skill development that can enable them upscale their activities. In other words, we must help miners, rather than letting them remain in that rudimentary level where middle men come to cheat them out of the little they get...” Here is the full interview that Fayemi granted ADEMOLA ADEGBAMIGBE and YOMI OSOBA Q: We congratulate you again on your position and the big task given to you to help diversify the economy. Now what are the challenges you met when you became minister and how have you been able to overcome them? Well, first it is too early to start talking about overcoming the challenges met. You know Nigeria has been obsessed with the attention given to oil and gas over the last four decades and that has taken our eyes off the ball as far as other sectors like mining is concerned. So, coming to a sector that has been neglected and underfunded, the deep seated challenges in the sector would not be overcome overnight. Although, I came into it with a very clear mandate from the president, which is to reverse the neglect and improve the fortunes of the sector particularly in terms of job creation and revenue generation. To demonstrate his own commitment, Mr President also sent two ministers to a Ministry that has been hitherto superintended by a single minister since 1995 when it was first created. Before then mineral resources used to be a part of petroleum ministry or part of the Ministry of Mines and Power, from the time of the late Alhaji Shetimma Ali Monguno in the first republic and under subsequent Ministers until General Abacha created the Ministry of Solid Minerals Development in 1995 with Alhaji Kaloma Ali as its first Minister. Coming to the challenges, they were many. We met a Ministry that was not only underfunded, in which staff morale was at its lowest but also one in which motivation was lacking. We met a Ministry in which significant work had gone into making the legal framework attractive to investors and comparable to any around the world, but one in which enforcement of those laws left a lot to be desired. We met a legacy of litigations on key assets of government under the Ministry’s supervision, particularly Ajaokuta steel Plant, the National Iron Ore Mining Company, Itakpe, the Aluminium Smelting Plant in Ikot Abasi to mention a few. We met a Ministry that is deficient with regards to the availability of bankable geological data for prospective mining investors and a Ministry that was experiencing a very tense relationship between the Federal Government, States and the host communities. The challenge of illegal mining and its concomitant effect on safer mining practices was also there. This is not exhaustive, but these were the major issues met. And what have you done so far to overcome these challenges? Well I have given you about 4, 5 challenges that are very central to turning around the sector. The challenges create the larger challenge which is the perception that Nigeria is not a mining nation. The smaller challenge or the practical challenges give vent to that view in the minds of investors when they talk about Nigeria. They say Nigeria is not a mining nation, forgetting that Nigeria has the fourth largest reserve of bitumen in the world, and the second largest of iron ore deposits in Africa, there are abundant coal resources. There is limestone all over the country; we have moved from being an importer of cement products to being self-sufficient and now an exporter. Many of these things are not even known to the ordinary Nigerians , let alone to outsiders. So the challenge of perception is very key and that is also why I am talking to you because media organisations play a critical role in influencing public opinion about what is happening across the board. We are often accused of not talking enough in this government to the media or communicating our achievements. So, how have we resolved the specific challenge of insufficient funding? This is not a sector that has to depend exclusively on government funding and our vision as encapsulated in our roadmap (that’s the first thing we developed coming into office) is that government will play the role of an enabler and not an operator. An enabling role for us includes providing access to finance for genuine miners. We developed a road map that sets out in very clear terms what we want this sector to become and how we want to get there. But in terms of what government has been able to do with regards to insufficient funding, you will notice that funding in this sector has significantly improved, yet it is not where we want it to be. But when I became minister in November 2015, the budget of 2015 was just coming to an end in terms of implementation. This ministry had an allocation of 1 billion naira, for its capital expenditure, out of which the Ministry was only able to access N352million - not even 50 percent of what was appropriated. We witnessed a significant shift in the 2016 budget that we prepared and capital funding moved from N1billion to almost N8 billion. By December we had almost received 50 percent of that N7.3 billion that was allocated to that sector for capital expenditure. That is a major jump in percentage terms. With the 2017 estimates currently before the national assembly, capital expenditure proposals doubled to N13 billion from last year’s N7.3billion. That is just federal budget allocation, we have also been taking additional steps for the first time in this sector. The sector has benefited from the natural reserve development fund (which had never been given to this sector before this current administration) with the approval of N30 billion as an intervention fund for exploration, strengthening capacity, providing access to finance for artisanal miners. We took that bold step and the president approved it and the federal executive council ratified the president’s approval and we have N30 billion now to assist in focusing more on exploration activities. This is because mining is research. If you don’t search you don’t find and you don’t know what you have. It is only when you carry out geological prospectivity that you will have a sense of what you have. Everybody will tell you that oh Nigeria has mineral resources all over the place but they can’t tell you the specific place where those minerals are, in what quantity they are, whether they are commercially viable or not. [caption id="attachment_68211" align="alignright" width="1274"] TheNEWS cover page [/caption] Is that currently being done by your ministry now? As we speak, we have our geological survey officials in virtually all the states of the federation doing a mineral mapping exercise just to update what is it that we have. So you have that N30 billion which we haven’t accessed in addition to the allocation of 2016 and 2017 which I mentioned. The ministry has been trying to raise funds from the banks in the last four or five years and we finally succeeded. Coming on stream, we have managed to use our own efforts to get another $150 million for the sector over the next five years from the World Bank. Again we will focus on those challenges that I pointed to, geological data generation, artisan and small scale mining formalization, strengthening enforcement of the laws and bringing Ajaokuta and Itakpe Mines to life. There are certain individuals who lay claim to certain mining areas as their ancestral land; yet their activities are informal, illegal. How are you handling such in the new scheme of things? Instead of wielding the big stick on these so called illegal miners, it is very difficult to tell somebody who is just using digger and shovel in his ancestral land that what he’s doing is illegal, he can’t get his head round it because it is his father’s land! His fore fathers have done mining all their lives, and then you tell the person that somebody who has a license from a minister from Abuja, is the legitimate owner which is what the law says. But we need to bridge the gap between law and reality and that is why we decided that we must help those informal miners (as we call them) to become formalized and we must support them with access to finance, tools, technical knowledge, skill development that can enable them upscale their activities. In other words, we must help miners, rather than letting them remain in that rudimentary level where middle men come to cheat them out of the little they get; where they expose themselves to environmental threats in the communities. They inhale a lot of illegal materials – mercury, poisonous materials as they wash what they find in the communities. We will use part of the resources we have raised in supporting those in the informal mining business. [caption id="attachment_68207" align="alignright" width="582"] Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Dr Kayode Fayemi (middle) during an inspection of Dangote Cement Plc's limestone mining site in Ibese, Ogun State recently[/caption] We are also strengthening partnerships and collaboration between federal and state governments. This is because we know mining will not succeed unless federal and state entities work together. The truth of the matter is that according to the law of the land, land is an exclusive preserve in the hands of the state government, what is beneath the land is my responsibility. I don’t have control over land anywhere, even my boss, President Muhammadu Buhari doesn’t have control over land anywhere. So we need to engage those who have the control over land in order to access their land, although the law is cognizant of the host community. We ask the host community to always give consent to whoever wants to obtain license. They cannot get license without approaching the real owners, the community owners. We have also streamlined that now so that the ministry cannot do it on their own without Certificates of Occupancy. So we are hoping to get states where the resources are involved in the consent process. In the end, what will work is to ensure that there is a synergy between us - Federal, the states and the host communities and that we believe this will help reduce the tension that always leads to conflict in those communities. In addition to that, we have tried to work around the perennial challenge of mining being exclusive, by advising states to create their own special purpose vehicles as a means of legally engaging in mining as a business. States are advised to improve their internally generated revenue. How can they do that in the mining sector when it is on the exclusive list? Yes, we know that states want to engage in Mining and we agree that they should not depend exclusively on Abuja for resources , hence the need to generate legitimate resources outside of allocations from federation account. We said to states, yes, you cannot apply as states but there is nothing in the law that stops you from applying for licenses as Ekiti State Investment Company or Nasarawa State Mineral Development Entity, you can set up special purpose vehicles, have a joint venture agreement with a technical partner and apply. We will give you and we have been giving them, so that has resolved a major tension between the states and federal government. I agree that this resolution is more administrative than legal in the sense that we are not the ones empowered by the constitution to make laws, it is the Legislature of Nigeria that can change the constitution of the country. For now we just want to get a logjam resolved and that is the way we are working with states to resolve that logjam. How far with the litigation on Ajaokuta? On litigation we have also managed in the space of one year that we have been in office to resolve the Ajaokuta litigation and we are now in the process of recovering the plant and putting it back to use in public interest. If an individual wants to go into mining, how easy is the licencing process? We have different categories and we state precisely what you can do to get the license. However, there are people who have taken licenses over the years and have not done anything with the licenses collected. One of the first things we did when I became minister was to implement the ‘use of lose’ clause that is in the law that you either use it and show evidence that you have been mining or that you have been exploring or you lose it. And after we published the advertisement, a lot of companies tried to revalidate their status. Others who could not do it lost their licenses. We give those licenses to people who we feel are better placed to develop the resources that are all over the place. We have also designated some places as special mining areas which government has special interest in, to look for a high grade investor who can come and help develop those rich resources where they exist. And in pursuit of our partnership and relationship with states, we are opening zonal offices of our mining cadastral units so that they are closer to communities, to people who want to engage in mining and are ready to do the work. We are doing these to bring the licensing arrangement closer to those who are interested in mining. What about foreign miners? What we are doing to ease doing business with foreign miners is that we are developing our IT infrastructure in such a manner that you can actually access our web portal from around the world and you can also apply online for a license. This is because we have information on the coordinates that you may be interested in, looking at your Google map. We are currently automating our IT infrastructure and also digitising all records in order to place them on the web portal so that you don’t have to be in Nigeria to know what we have in Nigeria. You have an indicative sense of what we have, you can get it from our web portal and if you now want to pursue it further beyond just seeing it online, you can then come and find out more about it. Processes and procedures are all going to be digitised and accessible on the web portal, so you are right, foreign miners can get more information about what is available. [caption id="attachment_68206" align="alignright" width="640"] Dr Fayemi during tour of the Birnin Gawari gold field, in Birni Gwari, Kaduna State recently[/caption] But critics say Nigeria’s immigration laws are cumbersome... Yes, that is also being addressed globally, not just for mining investors. I can tell you, not just at our level. At our level we are willing to give proper introduction to Nigerian Immigration Services of our prospective private sector investors and they have been very cooperative. At least from our sector, we can confirm, there is no time that we approach the Nigerian immigration service that they didn’t give approval for visa on arrival for our investors. But this is even being streamlined and standardized by the Presidential Committee on Doing Business which is chaired by the Vice President and this is going to be more seamless and stress free. If you are an investor and you have evidence of what you are coming to do in Nigeria, you just get your visa when you come to the country. What about the security implication of that? Of course we are sensitive to security issues and of people who may want to use it as a cover for nefarious activities. But we cannot let that undermine our broader objective of making investment or making Nigeria the investment destination attractive to outsiders. So there is a coordinated mechanism which involves Ministry Of Interior, Ministry Of Trade, Vice Presidents Office, Ministry Of Finance, Ministries that are involved in investment decisions as for their sectors, Agric, Mining and so on and so forth. It is increasingly becoming very easy for genuine investors to come here without stress. Last December, your ministry announced that solid mineral sector contributed N2.8 billion and that it was not the true picture of what ought to come in. What are the other areas you will make stronger to improve your ministry’s revenue? Companies operating in our sector pay taxes to the Federal Inland Revenue (FIRS). Their taxes, their company taxes go to federal inland revenue service. So, if you do your overall calculations by delineating what mining and mining related activities contribute to the FIRS, then you are talking of hundreds of billions as monies generated by this sector. And we are doing that, we are working with the FIRS to really identify mining taxes for our own information. Equally, we are very convinced that taxes, royalties, fees in this sector are still grossly understated, that’s why we went to the National Economic Council to seek approval for independent revenue consultants to work with our federal mining officers on a state by state basis, Although we have increased the revenue since we came in by that N2.8 billion that you said, that is still not a true picture in our view, based on the assessment that we have done on mining activities and we want to pursue that vigorously this year. We are looking at five years back duty of mining related taxes, royalties and fees to ensure that all the companies in the sector pay what they ought to have paid. Henceforth, that would become a model for pursuing our activities. It is not just us saying this, NEITI that monitors revenue from the extractive sector came to the same conclusion that this sector is not really getting an accurate sense of the revenue accruable to it and we need to be doing more about that. [caption id="attachment_68204" align="alignright" width="582"] Dr Kayode Fayemi [/caption] What is your ministry doing to secure mining sites? We are working with the security institutions - Ministry Of Interior, Directorate Of State Services, National Security Advisers Office, The Police, Civil Defence in what we call a mines surveillance task force which helps to monitor these illegal mining operations across the board. Still on illegal miners. In your analysis, you talked about your attempt and the attempt of your ministry to fully integrate them. Have you worked out any compensation method for them? With regard to compensation method, we cannot compensate criminality! No, I mean after their integration, the technical know how? Once you register in your state that you are a miner, we capture you as a miner, we know what you are doing, the areas that you are in and we try and encourage all of you who are in that area. If you are mining kaolin in Nassarawa or Ekiti but you are not likely to be the only person, you have about 30 of you using your rudimentary tools to do this, the idea we have pursued which is on-going is that the state government, the department responsible for mining and mineral resources development in the state helps to formalize them into a cooperative (like an agric cooperative). We come in with assistance. What are your greatest challenges? We don’t want to impose it from above, we sit with you as a kaolin mining cooperative in Nassarawa or Zamfara, what are you going through, what are the challenges, how can we assist and work with you? One of our ideas which we are currently discussing with the Bank of Industry is to put some of the resources from our intervention fund there for the disbursement to be managed by BoI. One other way we want to help them is also to assign to them legitimate tenement or legally free land, so they will not be mining illegally. They will have a license, whether it is a small scale licence or an artisanal license, that will enable undertake their operations without let or hindrance. And then we provide them with tools that are better than the shovels and diggers that they are using, so I have told you three things now, access to finance, tools or technical skills support and then legalization. What comes to them at the end of the day and what goes to the government? Once you are formalized, that means your operations are now open, we can legitimately capture the activities and ask you for returns at the end of the year, our mines officers who have been helping you, who know you have been making money, will come. You can make more legitimate money than the pittance the middle men will come and give you, you cannot compare it because if they hear you are doing it, they may take you to the police or to harass you, you know, you make even more money from your legitimate activities but government will make money from it. Talking about the new road map, synergy between the federal and state governments, there is this idea of an independent regulatory body. What will that do? The independent regulatory is a very simple thing. Government wants to get out of regulation. We have the directorate of environmental compliance inside my ministry, artisan and small scale mining also inside my ministry. So the idea is that all these are regulatory arms, the mining cadastral office that gives the license, the mines inspectorate directorate that monitors the activities of quarries, and mining companies to ensure that they are in compliance with the law. There is the artisanal and small scale miners department, the mining inspectorate department. The idea is that all of these regulatory arms are under one roof, an independent autonomous roof. Yes, we will still supervise as a Ministry but the independent body will regulate. The independent regulatory body will be similar to what we have for electricity which is called NERC or for telecoms NCC. You will notice that those bodies have been pulled out of of their parent ministries, they arenow autonomous and independent, they are agencies backed by law and their activities are also revenue generating. They don’t depend on government for funding. That is the idea behind the regulatory agency and it is not unique to us. I noticed that the ministry of petroleum resources is also doing that now, they want to pull equalization fund together with PPRA together with DPR into one big regulatory institution. [caption id="attachment_68208" align="alignright" width="640"] Dr Fayemi (right) during a tour of marble quarrying field in Ugya, Nasarawa State recently[/caption] We want you to also talk on the agreement your ministry signed with South Africa We have signed agreement with a number of countries, South Africa being one of them, China and Morocco. Concerning the one specifically with South Africa, we really want to take advantage of the experience South Africa has as a foremost mining jurisdiction in Africa. South Africa on this continent has the upper hand when it comes to mining, they have the most extensive knowledge and experience of what it takes to mine. So we have a lot to learn from them, they have a lot to learn from us on the petroleum side and that agreement also speaks to that. So they are engaging our petroleum ministry in some capacity building but specifically on mining, we want to learn from them. What they are doing is helping us capacitate and strengthen our geological surveillance, they have what they call Council of Geosciences which has extensive knowledge of mineral mapping and geological prospectivity and of utilizing a lot of resources. These may be of assistance so we will be sending our geologists to them for training and they would be sending their geologists here for mapping, for testing some of the minerals and they would be working with us by the time we bring our geological laboratory fully into operations. This is because right now we have entered into another partnership with SGS Inspection services to help us manage our geological laboratory in Kaduna which for the first time investors can now test the minerals right here on the ground in Nigeria rather than sending every mineral samples to Australia, South Africa or Ghana for testing. So, that’s the first thing. The second is that South Africa has what they call MINTEK. It is a technical institution responsible for mining services, skills development and training. It is a global leader in mineral and mettalurgical innovation. So, if you want to build skills in mining, mid level labour skills, MINTEK is the institution that they use in South Africa to do that and we have a lot of institutions that are not really quite up to what we want them to be. We have the National Metallurgical Development Centre (NMDC) in Jos; we have the Nigerian Institute of Mining and Geo Sciences also in Jos; we have the Raw Materials Exploration Agency in Kaduna and these institutions will benefit from exchange of ideas, experiences and technical cooperation with these South African institutions. And then technical capacity building in South Africa is first class. In my view, when it comes to that middle level non graduate training, non-university training, the real practical stuff is what mining is all about- how do you build a mining production level, how do you develop entire value chain in mining. We really are not there yet, we are not a mining nation yet and mining is big business, really big business in countries that do mining. We believe strongly that we will benefit from the experience gained from a country like South Africa that has been mining for centuries. This is what they have done all their lives, this is the highest revenue generator in South Africa. Mining in South Africa is what oil and gas means to Nigeria. They have more experience. I just came back from South Africa and we further strengthened the knots and bolts of that agreement and by May we are sending the first set of our own officials to South Africa to benefit from that training. What are you doing to ease the transportation system from the major mining sites? Well I am not responsible for Ministry of Transportation, I can say that my colleagues in the Ministries of transportation and Works have been very cooperative. They both understand the necessity for getting mining infrastructure right and they know that you cannot talk of minerals movement without having good roads or robust rail systems. If you look at the 2016 budget of the Ministry of Transportation you will find that they paid quite some attention to mining zones, the Ajaokuta, Itakpe. Warri line is in the budget and they have commenced reconstruction on that line, the Port Harcourt -Maiduguri rail refurbishment is also being pursued diligently by the Ministry. I am also aware that an MOU wax signed between our Ministry of Transportation and China Railway Corporation to extend the Ajaokuta line up to Abuja – an area that represents a significant mining and agriculture corridor in our country. Equally, I have agreed with the Minister of Works to submit a list of critical arteries to mineral resources that will require linkage to main roads and we are working on that for submission. When the rails are working, they will help reduce tension on the roads. The heavy duty vehicles that you see all over the place really cause tremendous havoc, damage the road and also leave all manners of avoidable tragedies that people suffer from. I think the ministry of transportation is working in partnership with us and also doing this in the inland water ways. We are also collaborating with the National Inland Waterways (NIWA) to really streamline the difficulties we have had in the past between the two ministries as to who owns what. This is because sometimes NIWA wants to charge for sand, sand is a mineral and not the business of NIWA. However access to the waterways where sand is dredged is the business of NIWA because they own the waterways so they need to be able to give approval for those who want to mine sands to gain access to it. We are also talking to the ports authority because mining is a serious business at that level. We are engaging customs, ports authority for mineral assessment on the ports because these things go through the ports and sometimes we do not do enough due diligence in mineral exportation. These are areas we are working on with the ministry of transportation, and its agencies as well as the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing. When people talk about bitumen in Agbabu, Ondo State, coal in Enugu, people in those area romanticize the deposits. What is the ministry doing about, lets just say three of them, bitumen, tin and coal? Let me say that this is the year of Bitumen. 2017 is the year of Bitumen, and we are very clear that we will kickstart the process for that very soon. We are almost finalizing the bidding process that we want to put in place for the bitumen and we expect that companies that are really up and doing would start production in the shortest possible time. In the first instance, this will be in terms of bitumen for asphalt, that bitumen for road construction, not bitumen for oil production. Bitumen for oil production can come later but the processes are more cumbersome and more complex. What we are going for in the first instance is bitumen for road and asphalt production and there are also several other by products including lubricants that you use for your engine oil and other associated products. I am aware that we have given mining leases to at least three companies that are interested in starting production but we are also opening it up to others who might be interested. But in addition to that, we are working in partnership with Ondo and Ogun states that have expressed interest in exploiting the bitumen resources in their domain. I don’t want to talk much on this until we get something for people out there to chew on but I am aware of the romanticism that accompany these talks. I think it is best not to over promise and under deliver, let me just say things will happen in that sector and it will begin to happen in 2017. Coal is another product that people are interested in, although as a government we are more interested in coal for power generation given the existential need of Nigeria as far as that is concerned. The Ministry of Power along with ourselves have mapped out how to ensure that coal becomes critical to the energy mix that the Ministry of Power is developing and ours is to provide where the deposits are so that the power generation company can be sited as close as possible to the coal deposits. And this is something that will see quite some acceleration in 2017. If in 2016 we developed our roadmap and generated funds that we need for the processes, 2017 is going to be the year of implementation in that sector, and onwards. [caption id="attachment_68209" align="alignright" width="480"] Dr Kayode Fayemi[/caption] Some retired miners wrote a petition to your ministry over non payment of their disengagement fees, have you addressed this? Disengagement fees are not always in our hands. If you talk about severance payments, some of these legacy assets were handed over to BPE, and part of what they were meant to do was settlement of severance. So the proceeds from the sale of the companies will also form part of what is used to settle whatever outstanding obligation there was. Such factors ought to have been incorporated into the amount the company was sold for so that you will not short-change those that have been disengaged from the place. So what we are doing is discussing with the BPE to ensure that Nigerians who have worked get paid all their entitlements and they do so before it becomes an albatross around their necks. I do not think it is fair if somebody has worked for a company for thirty years and could not go away with his decent retirement package. But these are some of the grey areas, inadequacies that attended the privatization process in the past but government is a continuous one. We are responsible even though we are not the architect of the misfortune, if you want to call it that, but we are now in charge and we should try as much as possible to address this issue. You have spent just a year and six months on this seat now, what can you point out as your major breakthrough? Let me say first that we must not have exaggerated expectations. This is not agric for example. In agric, you can plant maize in January and expect to harvest by May or even earlier. Mining is long term business. I have talked to you in the course of this interview about the leakages that we have blocked, increases that we have seen in revenue generation, about the increase in funding in the sector, about the partnership with the states, things are happening, but they are not going to produce the kind of immediate results that Nigerians seem to be angling for. This is a sector that does not lend itself to quick fixes. Indeed, from exploration to production takes an average of 15 years. Unfortunately the political or the electoral cycle is not aligned with the mining cycle and saying this is not looking for an excuse for the sector from achieving the intentions or objective of the diversification strategy. There must be restrained optimism rather than exaggerated optimism in the sector. [caption id="attachment_68210" align="alignright" width="640"] Dr Fayemi (left) with officials of the ministry of Mines and Steel Development, during an inspection of ilegal sand mining sites in Lagos State recently[/caption] But what should Nigerians look forward to? Nigerians should look forward to a much more legally controlled, regulated environment that would provide more jobs in the immediate for Nigerians and more revenue for the country because it is more a revenue diversification strategy rather than an economy diversification strategy. The Nigerian economy is fairly fully diversified at this point in time but mining is not contributing what it ought to contribute and we stated it in the road map that we want to move from the 0.3% contribution to GDP to at least 7 per cent in a period of fifteen years, by 2025. I believe that by the time Ajaokuta comes on stream, the time the bitumen goes into full scale production, by the time when coal for power generation takes off and contributes into power generation, Nigerians will begin to see the dividends of mining. That is to say there is hope Absolutely. There is a lot of hope. A lot of interest is focused on Nigeria and I am sure you heard and some major stuffs are happening, mining is about finding, discoveries and we had a major discovery recently in Kaduna, and that is something that has become of interest for geologists around the world. Given the quality of what is coming out of that particular find, who knows what will happen in other parts? Nigeria is largely a green field, as far as mining is concerned but we are also reawakening the brown fields, tin and columbite field for example, we are going back to those mines, to revive them and ceding to private sector investors and we are beginning to mine tin again on a large scale, we are exporting tin as I speak to you now. But we are encouraging the investors to set up local smelters in order to discourage the exportation of unprocessed minerals. How promising is the gold deposit in Ilesha? Very promising. One of the companies in Ilesha has managed to come up with figures of about 600,000 ounces per annum but they are just going into production. The result of the exploration is just being finalized so these things are happening gradually. That’s why government can come in, help them organize it, provide them with finance, research on the geological findings that are there and then support their activities with security, predictable regulatory environment, right incentives and then the right domestic market. Our priority now is industrial minerals that are more of locally consumed goods. We do not see why we should be importing 3.5 billion dollars of steel products into Nigeria every year, we do not see any reason why we should be importing 90 per cent of our granite and marble and ceramic tiles when we have everything that you need to produce these tiles in Nigeria. Has the jinx on Ajaokuta been finally broken? I think it is a governance challenge and anything that is a governance challenge all that we need is determination and focus. We need to do whatever it takes. You cannot put up an asset like that and let it go to waste, anyone who has been to Ajaokuta will know that the founding fathers had a great idea, what was faulty is the implementation strategy. That is what we need to correct. I believe that once we correct it, it is even going to promote other companies in the steel sector coming up in the private sector because we have a huge market. I mean over the last three months, because part of what I have to do is monitor the prices in the sector, the prices of goods in the mining sector and steel products, iron rods have tripled, and you can’t build without iron rods and you must build with iron rods that are standardized. You have a lot of funny iron rod products out there mostly imported but not good quality. Prices have tripled because we are importing and because of the instability in the foreign exchange market, imagine if we are producing locally, the companies producing locally used to have a big challenge competing with iron rods and steel products from China, India from all over the place. So that’s why for us import substitution is one of the key strategies, the more we support local companies, the easier it becomes for us to save on the foreign exchange that we are using. There was this woman from Kogi state who was complaining of the concessional agreement in Ajaokuta, saying that Nigerians were short-changed in the agreement and all that. What is the situation? I don’t have any reason to want to respond to that. Frankly you know when people labour in ignorance, sometimes it is difficult for you to relate to what they are saying. I would like to say that she is a probably well-meaning Nigerian pursuing an interest in Ajaokuta but what she needs to do is find out precisely the details of what transpired in Ajaokuta. If she does, maybe she will change her mind if she is well meaning but if she has an agenda, no matter what you say it will not change anything. I am working for Nigeria and Nigeria is my primary responsibility, my principal knows precisely what we are doing in Ajaokuta, this government will not short change Nigerians for any reason. [caption id="attachment_68204" align="alignright" width="582"] Dr Kayode Fayemi [/caption] We wont end this interview without talking politics, you are a politician. Well I don’t talk politics! There are challenges in the land, economy and people are blaming the APC government. What is your response? You know, if you are experiencing difficulty, the easiest thing is the blame game, you must explain away your difficult position rather than pull up your bootstraps and adapt to the situation. Let me render an analogy which got me into trouble recently. I went to give my university convocation lecture in my alma mater – UNILAG - earlier this year and amongst several things I advised the graduates that frankly no one owes you anything, only God and your ability to pull yourself up by the boot straps will ultimately save you. I said you will make a difference only if you don’t expect that government is there to provide for you or because you are the son of a Minister, your path will just be laced with milk and honey. Life is bound to hand you a few disappointments and that is the reality regardless of the situation we find ourselves. But just look at the trajectory. Our people don’t do enough of self reflection simply because we are experiencing difficulties at various levels and I can understand this. People don’t appreciate the message of tough love in a difficult situation, no matter how correct that message is, they want a saccharin- coated message. If you look at it with our experience in Nigeria, 2 million barrels of crude oil a day had depleted to 1m barrels by the time we came, it further depleted to 700,000 barrels by the time we were five months in office and only at 30 dollars a barrel. The same barrel of oil that once sold for $140m. Yes, it began to climb up to 56 dollars to a barrel. This is an item that provides 90 per cent of our revenue, people should just do the maths, it seems logical to me that we are in dire straits and it seems to me a miracle that we have even managed to come this far and not collapse under the weight of our current circumstances. But if you also look at it, our production has climbed back to two million a day with the repairs of the Forcados pipeline and if you look at the recently lauched Economic Recovery and Growth Plan, our forecast is 2.5 million barrels by 2020. With the current efforts we are making, macro-economic stability is bound to return gradually. I just like to advise for patience but I know patience is something that falls on deaf ears sometimes. The president feels the pain of Nigerians because for him it even pains him more than the people. President Buhari doesn’t hate the elite but he believes that the masses who were the architects of his electoral victory must benefit from his government. That is real, he doesn’t hide it even when we are in cabinet meeting. If you tell him ministers are suffering, this is the first time ministers are suffering like this, they don’t have accommodation, vehicles, you don’t give them anything, no allowances, he says well it is true I am sorry but what of the people out there? If your predecessors have messed things up and they took all the benefits what do you want me to do? Even me too, I haven’t received the benefits meant for my office. That is the challenge and as somebody who is concerned, who is not good at talking much, Nigerians don’t know that President Buhari worry constantly about their plight. We must commend the present administration for prudent management of the limited resources, honestly speaking, the resources are prudently managed. God knows where this country would have been if President Buhari were not in charge. It is tough, we have a joke amongst ourselves that this is a wrong time to be a minister in Nigeria because it is tough, but it is tough love. And things are already getting better. Recently South West APC governors and leaders held a meeting. I still wonder why the integration of the zone has not been possible for this long. Was it part of the discussion? I think it is always on the agenda across the board not just in the South West, it is only that South West people are more passionate about integration given the benefit they saw under the government of Chief Obafemi Awolowo as premier in the Western Region. But I don’t think it is fair to say that it has not thrived. I recall when I was governor, we started the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria in 2013, I hosted the very first meeting that created Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) in Ekiti state and I am glad that it is still trying to pursue the agenda for integration, in the country and they are doing it beyond partisan interest. They met recently in Ekiti state, they met in Oyo before then, it is not only about the meeting it is what they are doing that interests me, the DAWN Secretariat is working with the World Bank, DFID on strengthening resource corridors for example. I know they are doing a project now on strengthening Ibadan resource corridor, what can be developed, to make all the fallow land between Lagos and Ibadan become more useful to people, especially as the new rail line development comes simultaneously there. It is a long term venture but it is a venture that I am glad they have started to think about now. By the time the rail line will go through virtually all the South west states, integration will be more pronounced. When I became minister the only state that was out of the rail scheme was Ekiti and we began to make a case with the president and the president saw the logic, thanks to the minister of transportation too and Ekiti was looped back into the Western rail line. So for me those are the triggers of integration. If you have a rail line criss crossing the south west, it is easy to bring the farm products from Ekiti or Osun to Lagos which is where the market is and am also positively impressed with the way Governor Akinwunmi Ambode has taken on the integration agenda, he has proven to be more excited about it. He has joined the Odua investment family which Lagos was not part of. You remember the logic of “gedegbe l’Eko wa, danfo gedegbe” (a past mantra about the separate nature of Lagos from other south west states). I think integration is not in the reverse gear in the south west, yes there were those reluctant when we started but even Gov Mimiko who was the only outsider then warmed up to the idea and attended the first meeting in Ado Ekiti. All the governors were there, they were all passionate about it and I am glad that that spirit is still guiding what is happening now. It needs to be deepened, it needs to be more people centred, it needs to be more project focused, it needs to be more about peer pressure and economies of scale, learning from each other. What is it that Ondo is doing better than Ekiti, that Ekiti can learn from Ondo, what is Lagos doing that Oyo and Ogun can benefit from? I think if we look at it from this perspective, it is better. We can look at Olokola for example, which of course is specifically in Ondo and Ogun; it has potential benefit for all the six states in terms of gas distribution, in terms of potential for coastal activities, for deep sea ports, for mining, agriculture and. I think this is what we had in mind when we started DAWN, and am glad that that is still ongoing. Despite all your explanations on your relationship with the Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, some people still don’t want to believe you are friends, I want you to seize this opportunity to address that... Well if you say some people still don’t believe it, that means that they will still not believe no matter how much light I throw now. Asiwaju is my leader and he remains my leader and I have a cordial relationship with him, having a cordial relationship doesn’t mean having a sheepish relationship. I don’t even think Asiwaju will encourage anyone to be sheepish. I don’t think he comes from that school of thought, he comes from a more progressive outlook in politics. He is of the progressive school of thought himself, and he knows I can stand my ground, I can argue my ground but I am very respectful of my elders, am a Yoruba man. There is no question as to the cordiality in my relationship with Asiwaju but people can believe what they want to believe. The relationship is between us, it is not between them, he knows, I know. I want you to speak on the situation in Ekiti state, governorship tussle and innuendoes being thrown about that the EFCC will be asked to invite the former governor and things like that... EFCC is in charge of financial crime, I am not above the law. If EFCC has a case that they think I can shed light on, they will invite me but don’t also forget that while people maybe entitled to their opinions, they are not entitled to their own facts. Those who mention my name in association with anything fraudulent or corrupt, I don’t take it lightly. When I was governor, I slammed a law suit on the defunct Compass newspaper and the entire establishment knew what happened to them and I got millions of naira from them after receiving a judgment in may favour both at the High Court and the Court of Appeal. I have sued some people again, whatever you want to say about me, you are free, just get your facts intact, so that when you get to the courts you can present your facts because there is nothing that I have brought into politics than my name, it is not money, it is not properties, the only thing I have in politics is my name. I don’t joke with it because am holding it in trust, it is not even my name. So anyone who wants to say anything about me, that’s just my humble advice to them, make sure that whatever you say you can prove and I will not say whether those saying these things in Ekiti can prove it or not, they have received their summons, they will have their day in court. I may be invited to come to court myself and defend my integrity, my position that some people malign, my reputation, I think the opportunity will present itself. But in politics as in public service, people think it is a fair game to just malign you and that you will keep quiet. I am not that kind of politician. I am one of the politicians who never keep quiet about accusations of corruption, I don’t. And even when Compass people said oh please lets settle out of court, I said no, let them give the judgement, when they give the judgement you can then come, I can forgo the money but judgement will be given and when they give the judgement even Otunba Gbenga Daniel got involved even though he wasn’t the one who libelled me, I told him the same thing. So people know me in Ekiti