Dr Dele Alake, the Minister of Solid Minerals Development, has urged Nigerians to endure the current hardship because things will turn around soon.
The Minister stated this while giving his remarks as a special guest at the 2023 West African Mining Host Communities Indaba, organised by Global Rights, Nigeria, and the African Coalition for Corporate Accountability, ACCA, which kicked off November 15 and will end November 17.
He noted that Nigeria must be sincere and patriotic to ensure that mining host communities get the best of attention and treatment because all Nigerians belong to the host communities they come from and should be ready to ensure they get it right for the host Communities to be a better place.
He also maintained that the President has prioritised the solid minerals sector, hence his (Alake) deployment to the solid minerals sector as Minister, which shocked Nigerians.
The theme of the indaba is ‘Insecurity and Minerals Governance in West Africa: Building Mechanisms for the Protection of Mining Host Communities’.
It brought stakeholders together, including the Federation of Mining Host Communities, Miners Association of Nigeria, MAN, Women in Mining, Nigeria, National Assembly, Foundations, Corporate organisations, and other participating countries, including Ghana, Mali, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Kenya, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Zambia, South Africa, and others.
He said: “We were constructing the structure of government and the very critical areas, not just to be energized, but to create enduring structures, economic structures for our nation such that at the end of our tenure, these structures would have been entrenched so deeply and the society would have become used to a certain level of socio-economic activities and standard of living, such that whichever government or leader comes after would be unable to reverse the trend, even if you have the worst specie of human being to take over as leader because of the enduring structures, very fundamental structures that would have been put in place, nobody will be able to reverse the progress, the upward trend that we are going to pull this country with the cooperation of every one of you because when I say we are going to put it is every one of us.“
