Safiu Kehinde
The Federal Ministry of Solid Minerals Development has vowed to tightly secure Nigeria’s Solid Minerals, Forest, and other natural resources across the nation.
This made known in a statement by the ministry following meeting held earlier today between the presidential inter-ministerial committee and service chiefs.
According to the statement, the committee, chaired by the Minister of Solid Minerals, Dele Alake, met with the service chiefs in an effort to develop a workable strategy that will effectively secure Nigeria’s natural resources, in line with the Presidential mandate.
The statement read in part; “The Federal Government has intensified efforts to secure the nation’s natural resources as the presidential inter-ministerial committee held an expanded meeting with service chiefs.
“The Inter-ministerial committee chaired by the Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dr. Dele Alake met with the Security Chiefs on Thursday in Abuja.
“It will be recalled that President Bola Tinubu at last week’s Federal Executive Council (FEC), established an inter-ministerial committee to draw up a blueprint for securing the country’s natural resources, including solid minerals, forests, and marine economy. The committee held its maiden meeting last Friday.
“Giving highlights of the expanded meeting, Dr. Alake emphasized that the committee’s meeting with service chiefs that cut across all security agencies and Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) was a follow up on the earlier one to get inputs for developing a workable strategy to effectively secure Nigeria’s natural resources, in line with the Presidential mandate.”
Meanwhile, Alake revealed that the security agencies are going to form a committee that will design a workplan to be presented at the next meeting.
“Certain decisions have been made, and there is going to be another follow-up meeting because the security agencies are going to give us the framework of execution of our mandate. That has been the crux of today’s deliberations.
“The security agencies, the service chiefs, NSA’s office, the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) are going to form a smaller committee to give us the workplan, execution modalities and we will be meeting in another fortnight,” the Minister said.