The Federal Government of Nigeria has inaugurated a multimillion naira barite processing plant in Cross River, capable of processing 10 tons of the mineral per hour.
Inaugurating the plant on Thursday in Ugaga Community, Yala Local Government Area of the state, Mr Olamilekan Adegbite, Minister of Mines and Steel Development, said Nigeria would no longer import the mineral.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that barite is a mineral crushed and screened to uniform sizes and used as filler or extender for industrial products or a weighting agent in petroleum drilling.
Adegbite said before now, the country was exporting raw barite ore, which would be processed abroad, and was, therefore, losing lots of value because it was not processed locally.
According to him, this motivated his ministry to launch the project of establishing the barite processing plant in November 2021.
“Nigeria has a 4.8 gravity standard of barite in vast quantities in parts of northern Cross River, especially in Yala LGA, which is higher than the 4.2 found elsewhere.
“For this reason, the Federal Government decided to establish a processing plant in the state to help both artisans and commercial miners process the mineral for export and the oil industry.
“The choice of Ugaga as a location for the plant is predicated on its possession of rich deposits of barite among the South-South states.
“Also, for its closeness to Port Harcourt where the processed barites are required for oil exploration in line with local content and value addition policy in Nigeria,” he noted.
The Minister said the informal trading of unprocessed barite in the country led to revenue and job losses, adding that establishing the plant would create jobs, improve revenue and attract foreign markets.
He said the inauguration was an opportunity to highlight the efforts of President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration in showing some of the potentials available in the mining sector, which could serve as an alternative revenue source.
Adegbite said that no fewer than 20,000 jobs would be created along the barite mining value chain in the South-South geopolitical zone with the emergence of some subsidiaries and service-oriented companies.
In his remarks, the traditional head of Ugaga Kingdom, Ogamode Ipuole, commended the Federal Government for the gesture in his community.
He, however, requested the employment of youths in the area in the plant to reduce the high rate of unemployment in the community.
Also speaking, Mr Yunusa Mohammed, Director of Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM), said artisanal barite miners in northern Cross River, in their clusters, would now process the resource at the plant for greater wealth addition.
He added that due to the presence of the plant in the community, there would soon be an expansion of the local economy. (NAN)
