Th e Dangote Cement has urged the federal government to provide eff ective policy regulation to guide investment and operational aspects of mining to mitigate the challenges which places pressure on the potential performance of the sector. Th e fi rm said government’s strong commitment to mining will enhance Nigeria’s eff ort in meeting objectives of the African Mining Vision adopted by the African Union, AU, in 2009.
Th e AMV is Africa’s own response to tackling the paradox of great mineral wealth existing sideby-side with pervasive poverty. Th e cement manufacturing company during the 3-Day National Mining Summit it cosponsored with ConMin, West Africa, stressed the need for government to provide more incentives to attract people to go into mining. Executive Director, Stakeholder Management, and Corporate Communications, Mr. Mansur Ahmed Ahmed, said: “For mining to be done properly in Nigeria, and indeed, Africa, government needs to create conditions to make investment worthwhile, provide eff ective regulation, monitoring and suffi cient support particularly to operators so that they can grow, otherwise it degenerates into artisanal and small scale mining which is very destructive of the environment. “We need signifi cant amount of regulation to ensure that whoever is going into mining is doing the right thing at the right time.
To that extent, government needs to provide infrastructure because mining is infrastructure dependent. “Government has to create incentives for developing human capacity through government institutions and also provide facilities for training and testing which unfortunately, are lacking but needed by mining operators”. He said lack of clear regulation had led to all sorts of distractions in the mining process with negative impact on the environment and society as seen in Zamfara state in recent time. Ahmed said Dangote Group’s expertise in sectoral development had enabled it play signifi cant role over the past 20 years in mining limestone for its cement production and now it was exploring the coal sector to suffi ciently power its plants due to inability of the Nigeria electricity sector to cope with the demands of the manufacturing sector. “Th at is why in our industries we have always had to build our power plant to ensure that we are suffi ciently powered of which key cost element is fuel and gas but the erratic supply led to consideration for coal, which is however, another great advantage to Nigeria as it opens up and expand growth for its economy through employment creation in massive scale and jobs for small scale operators while generating more revenue for government”. Th e executive director also said the cement company has brought about several advantages to Nigeria including reducing signifi cantly the amount of cement imports and increased trade and interaction between countries.
