Nigeria must mechanize for mining sector to move forward-Alhaji Galoji

The National treasurer, Miners Association of Nigeria, Alhaji Bello Inuwa Galoji has disclosed that Nigerian miners need to mechanize for the mining sector to advance in doing its businesses.

Galoji stated this yesterday while answering questions from journalists at a workshop organised for miners by the federal ministry of mines and steel development in Bauchi, lamenting that lack of funds is threatening mining activities in the country.

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“Mining has to be mechanized. If you are going into mechanized mining, you need bulldozer, you need excavators, you need dredgers, you need compressors, whereby you have to blast, you have to open the ground and what have you. If you are going to do that artisanally by hand, actually is not possible”, Alhaji Galoji maintained.

Galoji, who is also the Bauchi state chairman, Miners Association said that one of the problems of mining in Nigeria is that the sector has not been mechanized as 80 per cent of mining activities in the country are done with bare hands with the highest number of miners been artisinal due to lack of funds.

Galoji who disclosed that the capital base for a small scale miner is over 250 million dollars, noted that the capital has always been the challenge because one must own at least not less than four to five excavator, two to three bulldozer, amongst others to start a mechanize mining.

The national treasurer who called for the proper harnessing of the mining sector for the country to depend less on oil an gas added that for the mining industry to flourish, Nigeria must invest heavily into mechanization and not by use of digger and shovel.

“By the time we are fully mechanized, human hands can only be used for directing, regulating and what have you. So, for us to advance, a lot needs to be done, we have to have adequate funding for miners to use in their businesses, it is only when we do that in Nigeria that we can advance in terms of mining”, the association’s treasurer pointed out.

Galoji while boasting that Nigeria has capable and best hands in the mining sector added that “we have the knowledge, we have the experience, we have well-trained miners, professionals in the academics that are in the system but what we are lacking is funding”.

Alhaji Galoji informed that the extension workshop for the artisans and small scale miners in Bauchi is a capacity building workshop where all selected ASA miners were invited to represent their communities or local government areas.

He said that two zones of northeast and northwest that made up of thirteen states were taking part in the four-day workshop with the essence of bringing miners together to give them new technology and trained them on the best way to go about doing the mining.

He said that the participants would also be trained on mining safety, how to use your mining equipment in a safer way because mining with a bare hands is a great danger to health of the miners.

Earlier speaking, the representative of the Director, federal ministry of mines and steel development in Bauchi, Mr Anene Nnamdi said that the program was organised not only as an incentive for the artisanal miners to formalize their activities but is also aimed at improving the knowledge-based and skills in carrying out their duties.