Mining Cadastral Office generates N2bn in 6 months

The Nigeria Mining Cadastral Office (MCO) said it has surpassed its 2021 revenue projection just within the first half of the year as it generated N2.016 billion.

The Director General/ Chief Executive Officer of MCO, Engr. Obadiah Simon Nkom, told journalists in Abuja yesterday that the revenue target of the Office in 2021 was less than N2bn, but that the office has surpassed that in just six months of this year.

Nkom said the MCO generated N2.58bn in 2019, the same year he took over as the Director General, which was the highest revenue since the inception of the Office.

He said despite the economic downturn in 2020 due to the onslaught of COVID-19, the MCO generated N2.303bn, being the second highest revenue generated in history of the organisation.

The Mining Cadastral Office boss said since the inception of the Office, over 34,000 applications for mining licences were received, out of which 15,600 were rejected, and 17,602 were granted, while 4,997 were revoked and 6,588 mineral titles are still valid.

He said the Office will in November, 2021 launch a new real-time online application platform for mining title applications, which can be used from any part of the world.

He said the transition from SIGTIM database operations to eMC+ web-based cadastre system of online mineral title applications processing is about 90 percent completed.

The DG said mining holds the economic potentials of the country, particularly post-oil era as even some key oil and gas players are now transiting to the mining sector.