Why We Generated Only N14.6bn In 5 Years From Mining Titles, Fees—NMCO DG

The Director-General, Nigeria Mining Cadastre Office (NMCO), Engr. Obadiah S. Nkom has explained why the agency’s revenues from mining titles and fees dropped in 2022.

Nkom revealed that N14.58bn was generated between 2018 to 2022, but admitted the figures were low due to some disruptions in the system.

The DG made the disclosure on Thursday at the 63rd Session of the State House Briefing held Abuja.

The agency was established in 2007 by the Nigerian Mineral and Mining Act 2007 with clear mandates for the administration and management of mineral titles.

The NMMA Act 2007 was re-enacted to repeal the Minerals and Mining Act No. 34 of 1999 for the purpose of regulating all aspects of the exploration and exploitation of solid minerals in the country.

Nkom said the Cadastre Office has passed through three upgrades between 2007 to date that enabled the migration of the system to an automated system (realtime).

The third upgrade introduced the electronic Mining Cadastre System (eMC), which targets repositioning the mining sector and enabling a transparent processing of mineral titles.

The current upgrade is expected to facilitate the operations of the agency and as well elevate its revenues.

A breakdown of the revenue profile in the last five years shows that the agency generated N1.55bn in the full year of 2018.

In 2019, the data shows N2.37bn was recorded, which shows growth compared to the 2018 figures.

Revenue grew marginally to N2.56bn in 2020 during the Covid-19 era and jumped by almost double to N4.3bn in 2021.

But the agency suffered a decline in revenue by N507m to NN3.79bn by the end of 2022.

He said all the revenues generated are transparently paid into the Treasury Single Account of the Federal Government.

The DG claimed transaction has been recorded in cash since the inception of the Mining Cadastre.

Nkom said, “All payments right from the inception of the Mining Cadastre have always gone to even before the commencement of the TSA we have never had reasons to use cash as a mode of payment.
We were using bank draft then. When TSA came in it made it much easier and I want to put on record that 100 per cent of our revenue generated is sent straight to TSA.

“Revenue generation is key because if you look at the aspect of revenue generation, we have had to now ensure that we improved on it. That is why as you are very much aware that we had 86 per cent increase in revenue in 2021 compared to the previous.”

He revealed that the latest upgrade impacted on the revenue as activities were suspended at some point to enable the upgrade.

Nkom said, “Because we are migrating to the new system, we had to do a lot of shutdowns because I know maybe there might be the question that in 2021 we had N4.3bn and then 2022 it went down.

“It happened because we were migrating to the new system. We wanted to ensure that we don’t have a system where after one day or two, we have a problem. We had to test-run it, shut it down at times, do a lot of things and that was what affected some of our activities in terms of revenue.

“But I can tell you with the new system, that subsequently, we are going to have a very good increase, because even at then, we were able to form about 50 per cent of the revenue of the mining sector.”

He explained further that most of the revenues were generated from application fees, processing fees and annual service fees or ground rent.