AFRICA’s OIL GIANTS NIGERIAN OIL THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN MINING SUFFERS UNDER ONGOING NEGLECT Report by Julie Bain In short: The establishment of the Nigeria Mining Cadastre office has gone some way to encourage further exploration for minerals in Nigeria. But potential investors are likely to look elsewhere until some of the major risks have been removed from the Nigerian investment equation. N igeria’s economy is dominated by oil, but before significant amounts of the fuel were discovered in 1956 it had an established mining sector. The focus soon turned, however, and its reserves of iron ore, put at 2.7Bt and coal, estimated at 3Bt, have been largely neglected. Government has made efforts to encourage investment in the country’s mineral wealth but success has been limited. The Nigeria Mining Cadastre Office was established in collaboration with the World Bank a few years ago with the aim of promoting the sector, and to manage and administer mining titles. This came about as a result of a reform programme that was carried out by the ministry in the sector. In a recent report in Nigeria’s Vanguard newspaper, the director-general of the body, Mohammed Amate said the mining sector in the country was starting to contribute to Nigeria’s GDP. He added that last year the office had issued about 1,600 mining titles. The Niger River – a possible route by barge to Port Warri for export. “Of course, when I say mining titles, they consist of exploration licences, mining leases, quarry leases and the rest. And from the beginning of this year to the present time, we have issued close to 400 mining titles. When we issue these titles, we don’t do so and go back to sleep; we also monitor what you are doing,” he warned. “We have a sister department in the ministry called Mines Inspectorate Department, which has offices in the 36 states of the federation. It goes around and monitors what you are doing. If we give you a licence and you go to sleep then we can take it away from you (we use the principle of ‘use it or lose it’). If you recall, in 2011, we cancelled about 400 licences.” “If you have a licence and you are not using it, we will give you a notice, informing you that we gave you a licence and up to a particular period you have not used it, so we are hereby giving you 30 days’ notice to resume work or we will confiscate the licence. We don’t use discretion at all; we base it purely on what is in the law,” Amate is reported as saying in the newspaper. The director-general said there were a number of companies prospecting in Nigeria. He highlighted Australian junior miner Kogi Mines, which is listed on the ASX. This company has been exploring for iron ore in the Kogi state for more than four years. Workers on site at one of 14 tenements owned by Australian miner Kogi Mines, which has been exploring in the Kogi state for four years. 34 MINING REVIEW AFRICA ISSUE 12 2013 The company says it is “evaluating an initial 5Mt a year iron ore operation at the Agbaja project. The intention would be to barge the mined ore down the Niger River to Port Warri.