Minister of mines and steel development, Olamilekan Adegbite made the disclosure while playing host to the Governor of Nasarawa State, Abdullahi Sule in Abuja.
Adegbite who said his ministry was resolved to ensure that the situation in Zamfara where bandits took over mining of gold does not happen again, told his guest that the FMMSD would develop the mineral resources in Nasarawa.
The Minister was quoted saying;
“Nasarawa State is the home of solid minerals in the country. We had an earlier discussion about recent discovery of precious minerals in the Nasarawa, Abuja axis.
“As you probably might be aware, we have been talking about this for a while; there is a programme we call NIMEP executed by the ministry where government has put about N15bn into exploration for minerals, one of which is gold.
“We have done this exploration across the country and we have discovered a very nice track of gold deposits especially between Abuja and Nasarawa where we share borders.”
Adegbite who also disclosed that the National Integrated Mineral Exploration Project is being executed by the ministry with an investment of about N15 billion for mineral exploration (one of which is gold), added that the project has generated geoscience data that has attracted foreign investors about the mining potentials across Nigeria.
Governor Abdullahi Sule on his own part lamented about illegal gold mining activities in the state, saying the state is ready to work with the ministry to end the illegal operations.
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