Better days for Investors as Bauchi moves to ease mining businesses

By Mohammed kaka Misau, Bauchi.

The Bauchi state government has announced its decision to put policies in place that will ease mining businesses for investors that are willing to invest in the sector.

The state Commissioner for solid minerals and mining, Abdulhamid Nuruddeen made this known during a press briefing on the outcome of the state executive council meeting on Wednesday.

According to him, although the mining sector is under the exclusive legislative list of the federal government, states can facilitate easy ways of doing businesses in the sector.

The Commissioner who said that the decision adopted by the executive council was also geared towards generating more income to state government, added that the memo he presented before the Exco was the first of its kind in the history of the state.

“Today I presented a memo on the proposed mining policy first ever in the history of Bauchi state before the state executive council”, he said.

“We pray that some of the revenue ways that are being placed in other ministries which are related to the mining activities in the case of the mining policy will boost the Internally Generated Revenue of the state”, the Commissioner explained.

According to him, his Ministry having realized the exclusivity nature of the sector which the regulation is with the federal government, deviced ways of getting revenue for the state from the sector.

“The states are been left behind with the artisanal activities, degrading the areas, causing a lot of environmental degradation and a lot of things that are risking the sector”, the Commissioner decried.

He added that; “we feel we have to come up with some policies that will unbundle the sector just like the oil and gas sector that was recently unbundled, we feel it is good for us to unbundle it so that we can free resources to boost our own IGR”.

The Commissioner who said to arrive at the memo, officials of the ministry went to some of its sister states to learn from them on how best they are approaching their own legislations and the sector at the state level.

“We realized that most of the states like Plateau, Kaduna and Nasarawa have adopted this kind of policy that I have just presented, we have borrowed a leaf from them”, he said.

The Commissioner added: “we have realized that there are some of the impediments that prevented the ministry from collecting the revenue most especially, the haulage, that is the loading and uploading fee, the ushering fee that we have to introduce the licensee from Abuja and other issues relating to the mining activities”.

“These are some of the things that we want to, you understand? tax the operators that are coming to the state so that we can boost the state’s IGR”, he said.

According to him, the policy centered on some of the issues that will boost the sector most especially the consent letter.

The Commissioner lamented that the community consent letter is causing a lot of conflict in the field and and is preventing most of the operators from getting the legitimate license.

“The issue of community engagement, a lot of conflict are coming from the community base on issues of Corporate Social Responsibility and so on and so forth. We have deliberated on it and the memo got unanimous adoptation from the members of the executive council”, the Commissioner explained further.