Fayemi Calls for Removal of Mining from Exclusive List
The Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, has called for the removal of mining from the exclusive list to concurrent legislative list to allow states play more prominent roles in mining in the country.
This, he noted, became necessary in order to make the mineral and mining sector more profitable.
Fayemi disclosed this in his keynote address at the fifth annual lecture of the School of Management Technology, Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), Ondo State.
Fayemi, in the lecture titled “Mineral Resource Management for National Cohesion and Progress”, said the present situation where state governments were not adequately involved in the administration of mineral titles despite bearing the brunt of impact of resource exploitation, is grossly affecting the growth of the sector.
The minister, according to a statement by his Special Assistant, Olayinka Oyebode on Sunday, in Abuja, said: “The country needed to take a cue from her experience in the oil rich Niger Delta, where oil riches rather than cementing national cohesion, became a source of discord and a toxic bone of contention in the polity and where decades of oil exploitation have resulted in a legacy of ecological degradation, trans generational poverty and violence.”
According to him, “The critical difference between resource-rich performers and resource-rich underperformers is simply resource management. We must now end this grossly self-destructive culture of governmental, economic and political irresponsibility.”
Fayemi added: “The constitution ordains the exclusive jurisdictional hegemony of the federal government over mining matters. The responsibility for licensing and regulating mining operations resides solely in the federal sphere. Accordingly, the very architecture of resource governance resulted in tensions between the federal government, particularly the Federal
Ministry of Mines and Steel Development, state governments and communities and became the main hindrance to the development of the mining sector.
“The structure of the sector was designed to relegate state governments, and offered no incentives to the states and local governments to support the growth of the industry. They have no direct access to royalties and taxes and thus, are excluded from optimally sharing revenue from the mining of resources in their respective jurisdictions.
“One consequence of these ills has been the low investment in the sector largely as a reaction to the systemic hostility towards private mining operators by states. These problems are connected to larger contentious subjects such as the proper location of fiscal domain and governmental jurisdiction in a federal system, resource rights and subsidiarity.