From Charity Nwakaudu, Abuja
Ministry of Mines and Steel Development, Olamilekan Adegbite has said that the award for best in digital innovation among Federal Establishments in Nigeria for the year 2022 recently received by the Nigerian Mining Cadastre Office, NMCO, was as a result of improved funding by the present administration.
The Minister, made this known during the presentation of the award to him by the Director General, NMCO, Mr. Obadiah Simon Nkom in Abuja, yesterday.
He commended the Director General for exhibiting a sterling qualities of leadership that led to the recognition and urged other agencies to emulate him.
“The sector for the first time in history is enjoying some funding that it would not have had and the ministry also had the extra budgetary funding of N30 billion granted sometime in 2017 which was given to us out of the natural resources fund
“We also have the World Bank facilitated project, MINDIVER (Mineral Sector Support for Economic Diversification Project), in the ministry as well so with a combination of these two funding, it uplifted the sector to where we are today, where we can celebrate the achievement of NMCO.”.
The Minister traced the evolution of the MCO’s activities to the analogue era of using polygonal geometry for delineating areas of mining, said what the office now use which makes it a lot easier is the Block Cadastre System that the whole world has now embraced.
“They’ve come a long way from the days of the analog record keeping, analog way of approaching the agency for whatever business you want to do.’
He, however, used the opportunity to appeal to the Federal Government for more funding for the sector, adding that the sector needs a lot of funds for it to develop because mines and steel is the way to go to diversify the economy from oil and gas dependency.
Earlier, in her remarks, the Permanent Secretary in the ministry, Dr Olawatoyin Akinlade, said the feat achieved by the NMCO is part of the ministry’s drive to operate with the highest level of transparency.
She enjoined other agencies and directors of the ministry to key into the service improvement agenda of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, particularly in the area of digitalisation and innovation, by developing new ideas that can be used in addressing emerging challenges.
Speaking earlier, the Director General of NMCO, Nkom expressed gratitude to the Minister for his support noted that he contributed a lot in making the office to be where it is now.
