Dangoma village in Kaduna State is sitting on nickel that may be worth an estimated US$600 billion says the minister of solid minerals, Kayode Fayemi in an exclusive interview with BusinessDay.
“Even though the price has gone down, I think it is about $11,000 to $12,000 per tonne now, and what is in Dangoma village, and there has been no core drilling yet, just surface examination, is approximately 40 to 50 million tonnes, and could even be more by the time we go deeper and find out what is in the place” said Fayemi.
Based on the minister’s estimate, this put the tentative value of the nickel find in Kaduna at between $440 billion and $600 billion. The price of a tonne of nickel on the London Metal Exchange on November 21 was US$11,075, information on their website showed.
In late August 2016, the Federal Government announced the discovery of nickel in commercial quantities in Dangoma village, Kaduna State by Comet, a mineral exploration and mining firm from Australia.
“The discovery is unusual because the nickel is found in small balls up to 3mm in diameter of a high purity in shallow soils in what could be the surface expression of a much bigger hard-rock nickel field,” The Australian, a newspaper based in the country, reported.
“The nickel balls, rumoured to grade better than 90 per cent nickel and thought to be a world first, given their widespread distribution, offer the potential for early cashflow from a simple and low-cost screening operation to fund a full assessment of the find that has exploration circles buzzing,” it further stated.
The minister also disclosed that progress is being made to exploit the huge find, which could boost Nigeria’s revenues.
“So, there are multiple arrangements that we have put in place, the company that made the huge find was with the Kaduna State governor recently, and the leadership of the company from Australia has come to see me, then they went to Kaduna to see the governor and to work out precisely the arrangement for further progress on how to commence mining activities,” Fayemi confirmed to BusinessDay.
He also said the potential in the exploitation of solid minerals in the country could serve as a window of opportunity to revitalise the Nigerian rail transport infrastructure which remains largely in a state of disrepair and requires huge financing to be refurbished, but presents a critical platform for evacuating mined minerals from Nigeria’s hinterlands to the sea ports for export.
According to the minister, “you would recall that even Ajaokuta particularly, part of the vision behind Ajaokuta is a multipurpose infrastructural development facility, ports, rail, airport facility are all attached to it, and one of the things we are discussing with some of the institutions that are beginning to show interest is infrastructural gateways, opening up of the corridors.”
He explained that there is a central corridor, which is a mining corridor in Nigeria, stretching from Kaduna, Abuja, Ajaokuta down to Warri or down to Onne as the case may be, and that the central corridor links up with Lagos-Calabar, Lagos-Kano and it is going to help bulk transportation of whatever is discovered in that corridor as well.
‘So, it is not just opening up the corridor, it also opens up opportunities that we are not even aware of for now,” Fayemi concluded.
Nickel is a very important alloy metal and is extensively used for making stainless steel and other corrosion-resistant alloys.
Also, tubing made of copper-nickel alloy is extensively used in making desalination plants for converting sea water into fresh water, even as nickel based alloys are used for more demanding applications such as gas turbines and chemical plants.
Furthermore, nickel-containing materials play a major role in food preparation equipment, mobile phones, medical equipment, transport, buildings, as well as power generation.
Nickel materials are particularly selected because, as compared with other materials, they offer better corrosion resistance, better toughness, and better strength at high and low temperatures, including a range of special magnetic and electronic properties.
Its most important alloys are those of iron and chromium, of which stainless steels are the largest volume.
YANGE IKYAA, Abuja
