Federal Government has declared that in about one month it will revoke all dormant coal mining licences of companies that are yet to commence operation on sites years after the licences were issued. Briefing journalists after the second meeting of the National Council on Privatisation (NCP), which was chaired by Vice President Namadi Sambo at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, Musa Sada, the minister of solid minerals development, said this was following a direct order given by the vice president that all dormant mining titles be revoked to allow government reallocate them to serious miners who are willing to support the Federal Government coal to power project. Sada, who briefed journalists alongside Chinedu Nebo, the minister of power, and Benjamin Dikki, the director general of the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE), also said that the coal development for the power sector was at the heart of President Goodluck Jonathan’s transformation agenda. According to him, it is worrisome that years after licences were issued the companies were yet to commence the actual mining of coal. He added that government was bent on using coal to boost its current coal to power programme. “For obvious reasons, we need this mineral resource to produce power to leverage on what we have to get what we want. “We have already started the process to release from any encumbrance those titles that are being held by people. We are not willing to allow it to remain on speculative basis. People that have these titles must have to operate them or lose them in line with the provision of the Minerals Mining Act,” he said. He further declared that “Vice President Namadi Sambo has given instruction that we must do all that needs to be done to make sure that these coal blocs go to people that need them and are ready to operate them and we are taking this instruction seriously”, add ng that these included the coal blocs that belonged to the government coal corporation before and were sold to companies who by now ought to have been in the full production of coal. Sada also noted that the vice president also directed relevant agencies of government to ensure that the legal impasse in Ajaokuta Steel Company is settled amicably and to ensure that all agitations engulfing the company be put to rest.
Posted on: Fri, 20 Jun 2014 23:57:12 +0000