In line with the mandate of Governor Godwin Obaseki to industrialise the mining and energy sector, Edo is the first state to have a private power plant and is also blessed with abundance of solid minerals. In this interview, Hon. Ojiefoh D. Enaholo, Edo State Commissioner for Mining and Energy (Oil, Gas and Power), speaks with EDWARD OSEGHE, IYAYI OWEGIE and JENNIFER OSADOH on the mandate and achievements of the ministry so far. Excerpts:
We know that your ministry is committed to driving sustainable development, but we would like to know more about the ministry and its mandate.
We have a mandate to develop the three sectors under the ministry (Mining, Power, and Oil and Gas). One of our core mandates is to industrialise the system, open it to economic development, bring in more investment, create jobs, and create policies that will hasten the achievements of the desired goals of the Governor.
Along the line, we also discovered that the Governor is not only ready to develop Edo State, but he still wants to build a sustainable system that another person coming in will have something to work with. We have systems and structures in place that whosoever will be coming in will just run with the system and the vision.
The first thing we did when we came on board was for myself and my team to, first of all, check if we have this database of the ministry. We need to know the stakeholders in this ministry, as well as the vision of the ministry, including the methodology, the plan, and the strategy. For us to start running with some of these policies and strategies, we needed to have the database.
What we did was to go ahead and start with the oil sector. We have more gas. Edo State is one of the leading states in gas. We have some crude, and we have the downstream sector, which is the filling station owners and the gas station owners. We had to carry out holistic database analysis and gather more information to complete our data.
By the time we were done with the first three months, we looked into the mining sector, which is an intriguing sector for Mr. Governor. First, we carried out stakeholders meetings across the senatorial districts. We were able to discover that there are 279 mining companies here working with us. We also did more research and did more collection of data, going to the Federal Minister of Mining and Steel Development. Of these data, 279 were the old licences, and old companies, we now discovered that about 288 companies have already filed applications in other areas.
We also discovered that about 70 percent of them are not Edo people. Because it’s part of the exclusive list, the only way the state government can come in is to design its self-sustainable policies and have an SPV, an agency, or a private company that will run that system. Next, we started the process of registering SPV and now we’re done.
Then we went ahead and did our geological mapping, and carried out our aeromagnetic and chemical analysis to see the mapping while trying to get all the available space that was not yet occupied.
We went ahead to carry out those evaluations and discovered that over 100 CUs were in different units. So we checked available space across the seven local governments in Edo North.
We created a lot of space to see that the state government occupies this space. Let people who are coming in come and work with us as a state.
Along the line, we also discovered that some communities are not being carried along. Their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is not structured. We also discovered a lot of issues of consent and non-consent. So, we set up a technical committee group to review those consent, registration approval, and all that.
Next, we invited the Federal Minister of Mining and Steel Development, working as a team to drive this, because the Federal Government alone cannot do it. So illegal mining became something that we needed to find out how to stop. The Federal Government set up a committee called the Mineral Resources and Environmental Management Committee (MIREMCO). That committee oversees most of these activities, identifying illegal miners, along the line while settling up our database. We also discovered that there are so many minerals that we have that people don’t know about.
For example, we have gold, lithium, vespa, and dolomite in large quantities. We have limestone, capstone, kaolin, gypsum, mica, and beryllium. Now the interesting part of it is that the gold and tin ore we have have not been explored. Nobody has gone into exploration of those minerals, just illegally.
We also discovered that we have a lot of what you call charcoal briquettes alongside. We have coal, a high deposit of coal, and nobody has done exploration on them. Then we go to the other side of Edo, the Ovia area. We have bitumen and platinum, and nobody has done any exploration on them.
So we said, let this Edo State-owned company start doing mapping and illustration of all these spaces so that we can bring in investors. By the time we’re done with our SPV, over three major investors, both local and international investors, we don’t know how the news went viral, they started coming in to say, ‘You know what, we want to take over this Edo State SPV, we want to help Edo State’.
For the record, what is SPV?
SPV means Special Purpose Vehicles; it is called the Edo State Mining and Investment Company. It’s now in Edo and it has been registered. And now, we are in the process of completing our contract and agreement on how we can run with that.
The state government has given us a marching order to revamp it before the first quarter of next year. As part of the things we are doing now, one of our major investors, NECIT NIGERIA LTD, is coming in to set up an international gold buying centre in Edo State. It will be the first in this region where they trade gold, buy, sell, and process with processing machines. That will be kicked off by the first quarter of next year. We’ll commission that project. It’s ongoing, the mapping, the land, the security structure, everything ongoing.
We went to see how we can bring in a lot of local investors, indigenous Edo people who want to go into mining. We created a platform called Edo State Mining Investment Platform under the SPV.
Under this SPV, people who are interested in mining can come to the ministry, we will give them all the necessary information because we want our people to be part of this investment.
We also set up the Edo State Solid Mineral Market Report, which is weekly on our portal, social media handles, and our record here, every Monday by noon, and on ITV every Wednesday and Monday, they always show the Edo State Solid Mineral Market Report, a weekly report. It’s the first of its kind in Nigeria, where you will see the cost price of all the minerals we have in the state. Every week, we are also showcasing the mineral of the week.
In the power sector, before the passage of the electricity bill, Edo State had already started doing many privatisation systems for power. We are the first state to have our private power plant. In the first two, Azura was there, and Ossiomo was there. Now, we have gone through the four stages of this policy – the acceptance stage, identification of policy, and creation of policy.
We have done our policy since July 2020. We have done the bill, we have passed our bill. We have created agencies that will drive those policies. We have brought in investors, we have generated power, we have distributed, we are still distributing and we are even expanding while other states are still at the policy level.
We went to the Subnational Electricity Act roundtable meeting in Abuja, which was announced by the Nigeria Governors’ Forum. I was there to represent the Governor. While other states were talking about Lagos State, that they were almost done with their policy and the House of Assembly was about to pass it, Enugu State was jumping that their policy was ready, I told them we were not even at the policy level. Our policy stage was about two years, three years ago.
I told them, we’re already adding more companies to those two we have. They were all shocked and most of them said they were coming to Edo State to learn the policy privatisation system.
We are leading in terms of solid minerals now. We are leading in terms of power, and for oil and gas, we have the first private refinery, so we’re also leading.
Apart from that, what made it easier for us was the ease of doing business the State Governor had given us to run with. Edo State is one of the safest places to do business in Nigeria today. We have a security network, well structured.
We are driving the mining industry. We have attracted a lot of investors. One of the biggest mining companies in the world, Rosatom, will be in Edo State. We’ll be setting up a lithium processing company, and a lithium battery production company. This will attract every other state to Edo State because it will be a centre of lithium. What we want is about 1.5 million tons every year for them to run their machine. We need to buy lithium all across other states to be able to meet the demand of that foreign investor.
For the power sector, we are building more capacity. Some of our gas companies like Seplat are willing to give out more gas to some of those investors who are coming to generate more power. We’re meeting with the energy sector of Oando to set up a wind energy system, a wind power system. If we go towards Orhionmwon area, those areas have more vegetation, and we have more wind. We want to think of alternative energy because decarbonization is something we need to accept.
We are setting up a pilot project for wind energy. First of all, we are developing 10 MW of wind energy, but it will be in the first phase with 1 MW. From there we’ll increase it to 2 MW. Depends on what they want to do. That wind energy system will be built here by the first quarter of next year, the first power project will be launched.
Then there is a company too we are working with. The state is also working to see how we can build a power storage system by Renera. Renera is a Russian company. We will start with our hospital to see how we can save our energy, to use when we don’t have light. With that energy, we can have 1 lithium battery storage system.
That means if we have light now, it will store the energy for you by the time your light is off, you use that storage plant for the next 13 hours. It will become a 24-hour light system project.
One thing I’ve noticed, you are hands-on. Now, with all of these developmental strides, all that the Governor has put in place, where is the place of sustainability?
It will cost us more to go back to the analog system. It will cost the next person coming in to go back to the analog system. The thing the person can do is to slow the process down. IT is not something you can touch, it’s a system.
For the next person that is coming, if he doesn’t understand what the Governor has done, the person has to go and learn and unlearn some of the things that he came with before he’s able to march into the system. We have so many bills and we have so many policies; we have sent and the bills have been passed. It will be difficult for you to start revamping or maybe trying to reverse those bills, it will be very difficult.
But what will help the person a lot is that the person will come and meet a table already prepared for him. The person may not even need to do more, he may just need to focus on maybe one particular area of governance and he will still shine. Not because he’s doing so much but because the foundation has already been laid. The next person for me will be a lucky governor.
For sustainability, I am 100 percent sure that it is a sustainable project. I know the person will be so happy to run the system because it is a self-sustaining system.
Some weeks ago we experienced a prolonged power outage and we know government offices and even some private companies are running on Ossiomo power. What was the cause and what is the way forward? How do we prevent a reoccurrence?
When we started it, because it is a new project, we had to develop a mini system first that will run, so that by the time the demand becomes very high, we can start expansion. When you want to have a successful project done, it is the project that will demand anything that you want. That is one of the acid tests to know a good businessman. You don’t just start putting things in place all at once. No. If you want to do a project, you need to see how the demand will come, then you begin to increase capacity.
So, what happened within those four days was expansion, and because it’s a gas-built system, you can’t just start doing expansion without turning off the system, so there won’t be any explosions before you can do your expansion.
For those few days that you saw that outage, it was an expansion process. After the expansion the light has become more stable.
So, it wasn’t as a result of sabotage?
No, it wasn’t. It was just expansion because the demand had become very high. Hotels now are applying. I got a call from one Local Government Chairman asking if we can extend the Ossiomo Power there because they have so many demands.
