The Federal government of Nigeria has retracted the mining licenses of over 3000 companies in the country.
This decision was based on what the government adjudged as defaulting on the terms of their licenses. According to the Punch Newspaper, a news agency in Nigeria, “the disclosure was made by the Director General of Nigeria Mining Cadastre Office (NMCO), Mr Obadiah Nkom, during a State House briefing organized by the Presidential Communications Team on Thursday in Abuja.”
The Director General revealed that the licenses were revoked based on these companies not using their mining licenses.
“And, we are very transparent; if you need the Certified True Copy of any document, an application belonging to anybody or any license or whatever, the law permits us to give it to you.” He said.
“Because anything we are doing can be subject to litigation; like we said, in terms of revoked titles, recently, we published a list of defaulters numbering 3,032 and we have revoked titles of 3,402. “And, we equally have people that have grants; they have been communicated, but when you cancel it, you see lawyers writing to us about following the provisions.” He added.
The Director General also noted that a number of applicants who had requested for their licenses have failed to collect them, but these applicants would be gazetted before the NMCO would decide to penalize them.
“You send letters to the applicants’ address; and if after 30 days, he does not remedy the defect, you revoke your gazette. As much as we appreciate the communication, some people will look for windows for excuses to give at the court, but once it is on the gazette, we ensure we put it on our website so that you don’t have any excuses.
The gazette is final; we now have those to arm ourselves so that at the end of the day, we know what it is to lose a case,’’ Mr Obadiah Nkom said.
He also noted that the NMCO generated over N3.7 billion in 2022.
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