Katsina State Governor Aminu Bello Masari has blamed the increasing spate of banditry and other forms of insecurity across the country on the failure of government to exploit the nation’s solid mineral resources.
Masari, who said this on Wednesday when he visited the Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Olamilekan Adegbite, in Abuja, maintained that the agitations for resource control and restructuring would pale out when the nation’s other resources, such as solid minerals, are fully exploited and harnessed.
He said: “Many youths have found a calling in criminality because of the failure to develop other sectors of the economy to keep them fully engaged in viable undertakings.
“Every state in the nation is sufficiently endowed with one mineral resource or the other. If they are fully utilised, there would be sufficient engagement for the youth to render criminal activities unnecessary.”
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While soliciting the cooperation of the Federal Ministry of Mines and Steel Development to assist Katsina State in harnessing its huge solid mineral deposits, Masari told the minister that his administration had provided the necessary grounds to make the state an investor-friendly.
Adegbite reminded state governments that mineral resources anywhere in the country remained the job of the Federal Government to exploit on behalf of Nigerians.
The minister said it is wrong of any state to claim ownership of mineral resources found within its territorial jurisdiction.
He urged governors to provide the enabling environment for investors to find the ease and confidence to do business in their states.
Adegbite implored investors to always carry the host community along in whatever business they conduct.
The Nation
