Avoid exporting unprocessed minerals, council tells FG

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The Chief Executive Officer of the World Energy Council Nigeria, Bala Wunti, has called on the Federal Government to embrace an economic policy shift to prevent Nigeria from repeating its historical crude oil mistakes in the solid minerals sector.

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Wunti cautioned that exporting unprocessed critical minerals while importing expensive finished industrial products would deepen domestic poverty rather than generate national prosperity.

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He made the call while speaking as a panelist at the 2026 Concordia Annual Summit held at the Sheraton New York Times Square, on the sidelines of the 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

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Participating in a high-level panel titled ‘Rare Currency: Critical Minerals in a Shifting Global Economy’, Wunti addressed global supply chain dependencies, highlighting how developing nations can leverage their raw deposits for domestic industrialisation.

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The former chief upstream investment officer at the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited stressed that Nigeria’s estimated 44 critical mineral types—including lithium, rare earth elements, nickel, and cobalt—must be processed locally into manufacturing value chains.

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“For half a century, Nigeria exported crude oil in its raw form and turned around to import refined petroleum products at astronomical costs. That structural anomaly created poverty, flight of capital, and economic vulnerability instead of wealth.

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“We must not repeat that failure with lithium, tantalite, and rare earth elements,” Wunti said.

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Addressing why Nigeria’s mining sector has underperformed despite vast geological potential, Wunti identified the lack of standardised, bankable geological data as the chief barrier preventing institutional capital inflows.

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“The fundamental problem has been the gap between mineral potential and an investable project. Global investors do not deploy capital into potential; they deploy capital into bankable projects backed by JORC-compliant data. We had indications of minerals in the ground, but we lacked the commercial structuring needed to convince international financiers,” Wunti added.

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He noted that converting raw deposits into commercial assets required reliable geological surveys, stable regulatory frameworks, host community security, power infrastructure, and clear routes to international markets.

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Wunti cited the newly established Nigerian Solid Minerals Company as a pivotal state-backed investment vehicle designed to bridge this gap by converting raw geological data into de-risked, commercially viable equity propositions for private investors.

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