The Minister of Solid Minerals Dele Alake, on Thursday said that previous administrations have failed to effectively utilize the revenues from the oil sector.
Alake said this at the ministerial briefing in Abuja while unveiling his performance in the last ten months.
He said, “Nigeria practiced a monocultural economy, which means Nigeria has solely depended on oil. In my own estimation, Nigeria, over the decades, failed woefully to efficiently utilize the revenue that accrued to us from the oil sector.
“And how did we fail to utilize that? We failed to utilize the humongous amount of petrodollars that came into the coffers of this country. We did not utilize this money to sufficiently create a very solid structural economy in other sectors.
“And one of the most critical sectors that we’ve failed to address over the decades is the solid mineral and agricultural sector”.
Alake said he was mandated by the president to restructure the ministry which had been redundant to investment, revenue and growth. This he said, prompted the total revocation of over 2,500 licenses.
Explaining further the minister said, “On the resumption of the president into office, there has been a major plank of the renewed hope agenda which is contingent on the diversification of the economy, away from oil.
“And towards this end, we discovered on assumption of office that we had several people, Nigerians or non-Nigerians, holding titles and failed to remit the normal civic obligations to the government, like paying their taxes, paying their fees, even renewal annual fees, that are as little as N200,000. Whereas, these people were making away with billions from the Nigerian economy.
“We are sanitizing the operating environment of the solid mineral sector, to enable it, to assume its pride of place, in contributing significantly to the GDP of this country.”