‘What’s left of Jos tin more than what has been mined’

The Chairman of the Plateau State Economic Team, Mr Ezekiel Gomos, has said the government is encouraged by the informed opinion that the tin deposits left unmined in Jos and surrounding communities in Plateau State is more than what had been tapped since the decades of tin mining around the Jos Plateau.

Until the coming of oil added to a couple of other factors to decimate tin mining in the 1970s, Jos which became known as Tin City, projected Nigeria into the limelight as a major global producer of tin, and deciding to revive mining of tin and other minerals, the Plateau State Government has taken certain steps in recent times, including the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) last week with an infrastructure development company, PW Limited, to ascertain the quantum of the state’s mineral resources and chart the path to renewed mining activities.

Mr Gomos who spoke to Daily Trust on the side of the MoU signing ceremony, said, “We’ve been told that what’s left of tin is much more than what has been mined.”

He added that the MoU with the PW Limited was intended to determine just what tonnages of tin, columbite, iron, lead, zinc, tantalite and so on were available and in what specific parts of Plateau State and to lead renewed mining of the minerals.

Gomos said the Plateau Mineral Development Company (PMDC), an investment arm of the state Ministry of Mineral Development which was formed in the 1990s but was allowed to go moribund, had been revived as the vehicle to drive government’s determination to restore Plateau State’s glory as a mining hub.