By Correspondent
Animus Online Sustainability Magazine met with Hon Musa Mohammed Sada, Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Nigeria
Hon Musa Mohammed Sada who has served in various capacities both in the private and public sectors.
Having served meritoriously as a Minister and Member of Nigeria’s Federal Executive Council from April 2010 to May 2011, Mohamed Sada was reappointed by the newly elected President to continue as the Minister of Mines and Steel Development Nigeria in July 2011.
Prior to his appointment as a Minister in April 2010, Arc. Musa Mohammed Sada was at various times a Consultant Architect and Project Manager, a Commisioner in Katsina State of Nigeria and a Lecturer at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria where he graduated in Architecture. Arc. Musa Mohammed Sada also holds an MBA from the same University and is an Alumnus of Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Massachusettes USA.
Mohammed is a registered Architect and Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Architects as well as the Institute of Industrialist and Corporate Administration Arc. Musa Mohammed Sada is also a Member of the Nigerian Institute of Management and a Member of the National Home Builders Association of the U.S.A. Arc. Sada’s effort in implementing the Reform programme of the Minerals and Metals Sector of the Nigerian Economy and the level of achievements so far recorded with the Reforms, earned him Honorary Fellow of Nigerian Mining and Geosciences Society as well as Honorary Fellow of Nigerian Society of Mining Engineers.
What are the key challenges you currently face in your Ministry, given lack of attention to it by previous and current government.
The first key challenge is around the areas of policy. As you mentioned, it is very important that government takes a stand on what it wants to do in this sector.
Macro Challenges
The current government has taken a decision to diversify the economy of the country and pay a little more attention to minerals sector. Before that decision was taken, all the attention was on the hydro carbon sector because government gets a lot of revenue easily.
Most importantly the sector needs to find space in the new development plan of the government. Government is launching an industrial revolution plan that relies on creating value chains. As you know very well, there is no sector that creates more value chain than the minerals sector.
As witnessed in current global trends, mining is now wholly a private affair. However, if you want to bring in the private sector you have to be sure of what you are presenting to them.
There is a lot of work that the sector should do in generating the operating, legal, technical and institutional framework. Currently, to ensure that these frameworks are in place and institutionalised, the ministry is taking a lot of time to implement them with the hope of developing a fully functional system.
The major immediate challenge now is to convince investors to come and invest into the sector. However this does not only rely on the sector itself but the general investment environment of the country is important.
These challenges are not insurmountable but are good to face. If one is to expect sustainability in the mining sector, these are some of the challenges and issues that need to be addressed.
These challenges are at macro level whilst the micro level ones include skills development amongst others.
Micro Challenges
A country that intends to develop cannot just look at the value of the resource but add value whilst exploiting the resources sustainably and responsibly.
The exploitation and value addition cannot happen without the right skills and knowledge.
If you look at the global trend now, you can hardly get value addition done by others more-so when the operator is a private sector.
We as government usually tend to sit back and regulate; but how do you regulate without knowledge and right skills?
Recent experiences have shown that lack of requisite skills and knowledge in any sector and more so in Africa can create adverse impacts. A failure to address knowledge and skills gaps and just rely on foreign expertise and investors can stimulate uprisings when communities notice they are being left behind.
For a sector (mining) that has been left behind and not received the right attention for a very long time, the ministry is doing very well in relation to the above micro and macro challenges.
What are the lessons you could learn from policy failures in oil and gas sector
Largely in oil sector we learn from two important areas; environmental and community sustenance.
As we were finalising the minerals act we looked at the sections of the act critically and assumed as if we were applying them to the oil sector followed by a conformation test.
Environment
For instance looking at environmental issues, the previous minerals act did not ensure responsibility by operator for the impacts caused. This is what currently left us with a lot of legacy environmental issues.
Most of the abandoned mines were as a result of operations done when operators had no responsibility. What we have done now in the new law, is to give the responsibility back to the operator.
Before an operator gets a mining lease or immediately after, they have to submit an environmental impact assessment report as well as the remediation plan (environmental protection and rehabilitation programme) approved by relevant authorities.
The environmental remediation plan is also accompanied with some funding support.
Some companies would like to make the plan in such a way that as they are exploiting the minerals, they are reversing impact.
In most cases such companies will be exploiting bulk minerals like limestone over long periods. In this case, they cannot afford to wait to implement environmental reclamation until they finish operations. So as they go forward they will be reclaiming .
You will find that some of these companies even have forest nurseries and hire forest officers. These are the results of the new development. This is also largely learning from the oil industry just like you said.
Community
If we look at the community issues, an operator cannot get a mining lease now without a community development agreement.
This is a legal development that can make you lose your rights to mine if violated. This again is a lesson from the oil sector, all the issues of percentages are simply because communities are not carried along.
If communities are carried along, their rights are considered, you will not have problems.
To bring communities effectively on board, in the mining sector, first when you are applying for a mineral title even for an exploration license, you must get land owners consent.
As communities sometimes lack understanding and appreciation of the value of what they are handing over, the ministry provide guidance. The ministry provides guidelines of how to value the resources and how to arrive at compensation.
The Ministry also advices communities to get legal representation.
Most of the areas where mining is done unfortunately belong to people who don’t appreciate the value of the minerals.
These two areas, amongst others, are clearly entrenched in the law. These are attached to your right to mine and if violated one loses the right.
How do you manage inevitable change in term of political office positions; ie changes in Ministers within the sector as this impact on continuity of set policies, investor confidence amongst others?
Part of the reform agenda of the sector is to create stronger institutions.
Currently the key areas of the sector are run by agencies. The agencies have their own laws and they operate outside bureaucracy of government.
There is legal redress for their activities. You can take the agency to court and in doing that you are not taking government through the same legal process. They will have to defend their activities and these are in their establishment acts. We have been trying to do this for the past 3 to 4 years to make sure we properly entrench it.
One of the key areas of development in the sector is mineral title administration, which used to be part of the bureaucracy of government whereby the discretion was with the minister.
The minister could give and take mining titles. What we did was to take this out from the minister’s responsibilities. To transfer this responsibility to the Agency, the ministry created a law for it.
There is a well-defined and informed process for applicants. For you to get a license you don’t have to see me, you get it through the process, it’s there and it advises you to seek redress if not satisfied with your application or case.
So we don’t have much problems of continuity in the sector. These are the issues we learnt from oil sector.
Thank you Hon Minister.
Interview conducted by Editor of Animus Sustainability Magazine (www.animus-csr.com); For more news, reports and research on sustainability in Africa follows us on Facebook; Twitter and Linkedin
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