The Senate Committee on Solid Minerals has pledged to provide legislative support to protect Chinese companies intending to invest $1 billion in Nigeria’s solid minerals sector.
The acting Chairman of the Committee, Senator Onawo Mohammed Ogoshi, assured a Chinese delegation during an interactive session that the Senate will provide enabling legislation to protect their investments across Nigeria.
This assurance, shared in a statement from his media office on Sunday, emphasizes the Senate’s commitment to creating a supportive legal framework for foreign investors in the country’s solid minerals sector.
He said, “The Nigerian Senate is supposed to give you all the necessary encouragement to come and bring this huge amount of money to our economy.
“Our laws on solid minerals exploration are very robust. We intend to make it more robust by amending some of the laws that are obsolete, outdated and enact laws that will give your companies better protection in doing good business in Nigeria.”
He appealed to the delegation to bring in more investors into Nigeria to do business.
Also speaking, a member of the committee, Senator Adamu Aliero, stated, “I join the chairman to commend you for coming to invest in our country. You have come at the right time when the country is venturing into diversifying her economy.
“We had a mono-economy before now, where we depended heavily on oil for our foreign exchange earnings.
“However, the federal government has realised that we had no better choice than to look for other sectors of economy to earn revenue to finance our budget and solid minerals is one area where we have a lot of potentials.
“We will do all we can to facilitate your involvement in this sector. We will liaise with the Ministry of Solid Minerals at the national level to secure licenses and to give you permission to go and start mining.
“We will also talk to the governors and the traditional institutions to ensure that you have free access to the areas where you are going to do your business and once that is done, I don’t think you will have any problem,” he said.
Earlier, the leader of the Chinese delegation, Mr. Chen Twan of Zong Hong Kotai Group, revealed that the delegation is planning an initial investment of $500 million in Nigeria’s solid minerals sector, focusing on Zamfara, Kebbi, and Nasarawa states.
He stated that if their exploration efforts are successful within the first year, they intend to expand their investments to other states with solid minerals potential.
Twan said, “If we test the waters and see that it is good, we will attract more investors to Nigeria to invest in minerals deposits.
“As an international group, our company specialises in mining and bitumen. In the past few years, we have invested extensively globally, and on that strength, we have come to Nigeria to survey the possibility of investing in the mining and industrial park sectors in your country for the coming year.
“We also have another investment in Nigeria and we will make that known in the course of our stay in the country.”
A representative of Nigerian investors and Managing Director of El-Tahdam Exploration Limited, Mr. Adamu Tah, said the support of the Senate has given them the courage to invest the huge amount of money in the nation’s solid minerals’ sector.
“With Senate’s support, they still want to invest more money into this venture and if that is good, they intend to invest another $1Billion into the solid minerals sector when this first phase of the investment scales through,” he stated.
