The Federal Government has announced that gold deposits have been discovered along the Abuja-Nasarawa Expressway.
Olamilekan Adegbite, Minister of Mines and Steel Development, disclosed this when he received Abdullahi Sule, Governor of Nasarawa State, at his office in Abuja.
According to a statement issued by Ayodeji Adeyemi, his media aide, on Wednesday, Adegbite said the gold deposits were discovered through the National Integrated Mineral Exploration Project being undertaken by the ministry.
The minister said the ministry would develop the mineral resources in Nasarawa.
He, however, noted that resolved to avoid a repeat of the situation in Zamfara State, where unauthorised persons have access and control the mining of gold.
The statement read: “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 allayed the concerns of the Nasarawa State Government about the menace of illegal gold, saying his ministry is working with relevant security agencies to avert such unwanted activities from happening.
In his own remarks, Governor Sule said his state was prepared to work with the ministry to prevent the snowballing of illegal mining in Nasarawa.
He stressed that his administration was indeed concerned about the threat of illegal mining and its associated vices.
He noted that despite experiencing some form of illegal mining of gold in the area called Ukai, the area had attracted some respectable companies who were mining legally in the state.
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