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The Federal Government in a bid to stop illegal exploitation has created mineral processing centers across the six geopolitical zones.
This was revealed by the Minister of Mines, Steel Development, Olamilekan Adegbite, on Thursday, during a pre-event press conference in celebration of the 2022 Nigeria Mining Week.
According to him, the government had demonstrated its support by putting money on ground to execute six regional projects on this downstream policy.
He said, “People say put your money where your mouth is. We are saying this is good, but the government has this by putting money on the ground and I think I have said this. Government is executing six regional projects on its downstream policy. We are saying that our minerals should not be taken outside the country.
“In Kogi State, the regional project for North-Central, we have a gold smelter that processes our gold. For Kano, North west, we have a gold sup. What we are doing is essentially to turn our raw gold mined and smelted into objects of beauty, ornament and jewellery. We are also training people that will do this. So you can see how interwoven they are. We have graduated three sets of people who have learned jewellery-making and they will populate this sector.
“In Ibadan, we have a gem stones market, people come to Ibadan. There was a former market at Ojo, which we are building on. Foreigners come to take our stones without any value added to the society and our people shortchanged. But what we are doing now with a gemstone market is to add value to the stones so as to add to its beauty. People are also being trained to handle gemstones and we will also have a world-renowned center for gemstones. We are putting all effort into making Ibadan a production center.
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