Micro Finance

December 18, 2015

NIGERIA AS A HAVEN FOR SOLID MINERALS :ESTIMATED WEALTH POTENTIALS AND DEMOGRAPHY-PART ONE

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There are very few countries in the world if any at all that can compete with Nigeria in terms of natural capital endowment considering its landmass to that of countries like Rusia,America ,Canada and China respectively .The blogger-editor –ibikunle laniyan explores the immense deposit in this write up below.

It is a common knowledge that Nigeria is a heavily endowed nation and there is no doubt that few countries across the world can compete against her when it comes to braggart about this hidden wealth that even many Nigerians hardly know.The Nigerian people are sitting on immense wealth in their backyard and due to this thick and stickly meanness of an extreme ignorance,Our people still lives in abject poverty and ghastly deprivation as we struggle for nothing in the midst of plenty .

The federal government has identified this immense deposit in commercial quantities ,sheding more light on the amazing endowment and the convincing environment in which they were found.Each local government has one or two solid minerals that it can survive on rather than the heavy reliance on monocultural resource madness that has lasted for almost 60 years since discovery of crude oil .A total commercial deposits of 37 minerals were newly uncovered in 2009 up from 33 minerals recorded in 2008.This immense deposit as proven has been found cannot be exhausted for the next 500 years as there are over 40 different kinds of solid minerals and precious metals buried beneath the Nigerian Soil .Unfortunately Nigeria looses about 8 trillion naira per annum to illegal mining of Gold alone .Consequently ,the highly under tapped and largely under exploited solid mineral sector though sources differ contribute less than 0.3 per cent to the GDP .

Kogi State and Nassarawa State top the list in terms of mineral deposits and are regarded as the most endowed States in the country.In the former ,a total deposit of 29 solid minerals found in commercial quantities and these include –feldspar,dolomite,bauxite ,limestone,gold, tar ,coal and iron ore among others.Each of the 21 local govts has a deposit of one or two minerals deposits such as coal found in the Okaba district of Ankpa local government area .This site alone holds a heavy deposits and reserves of 99million tonnes of coal and such deposit ,amazingly can supply all of Nigeria for the next 400 years with enough electricity .It also holds enough limestone to keep 3 giant sized cement companies operating with annual production capacity of 15 million tons ,operating for unbroken 99years stretch .In Nassarawa State , about 25 minerals were uncovered including tantalite , barite,,copper, iron ore, tin ore, columbite ,acquamarine etc.

Note that these findings were brought to life by the last administration .Infact, the then minister of mines and steel Development –Dezani Alison Madueke revealed government strategy to focus on seven key minerals such as coal,barite iron ore,limestonegold ,bitumen and tantalite ,but this was mere rhetoric which did not stop the lip service painting to continue .About 10 sites were said to hold reserves of over 50,000 ounces of high quality gold

According to NEITI report ,solid minerals are scattered all over the country even though they are concentrated in some regions than others .In Niger , Osun,Ogun ,kogi and Kaduna States over 40million metric tonnes of Talc deposits were found in addition to huge deposit of coal ranging from Bituminous to the Lignite in the South Eastern AnambraBasin.In the Asaba area of Niger Delta ,extensive deposits of Zinc-Ores were also found .While tin, niobium and lead are found in the around Oyo and Igbeti,over a billion metric tones of gypsum spread around Sokoto ,Niger, Ondo and Ekiti and 70 percent of this vast wealth were deposited in the northern region .

Extensive deposits of limestone were discovered in Cross River ,Ogun,Benue ,Gombe,Sokoto,Ebonyi,Edo and Kogi States .While magnesite spread around Adamawa AND Kebbi States ,Coal was found in Enugu,Imo ,Koggi,Delta,Pleateau ,Anambra ,Abia ,Benue ,Edo,Ondo,Bauchi ,Adamawa, and KwaraStates.Inkano and Kaduna ,Bauchi and Niger States ,Wolframite was found.When you go Kano ,Silver is found and Kyanite can be found in Kaduna and Niger states and likewise Manganese spread across the Northern States only .Diatomite is found only in YobeState;ilmenite –rutile is found only in Bauchi ,Plateau and Kaduna States.Fluorite in Taraba is also found only in Taraba and gold can be found in Niger,Kebbi,Kaduna,Kogi ,Kwara and Zamfara and to some extengt in Osun .When you go Nasarawa also ,it has been tagged like Kogi as the home of solid minerals and one of the most endowed in the country.

They include clay,ilmenite,mica, barytes pyrite, galena,limestone,columbite,sodium chloride , ephalerite,silica sand ,granites ,tantalite , talc, gemstone ,such as tourmaline ,aquamarine and sapphire, emerald heliodor,amethyst ,halcopyrite, topaz,cassiterite,quartz, ,coking coal,marble and iron ore .Dont forget or to inform ,Bauchi has metal ores,non-metallic ores and gemstones and is another richly endowed state .It also has kaolin,talc, tin, iron ore,quartz,gypsum,zircon, copper ore , beryl,garnet , columbite,muscovite,aquamarine,topaz,marble,garnet,calcite among others .Moreover ,an estimated 10 million metric tonnes of lead and Zinc veins spread across eight states of the federation including the most favourable prospect about 700,000 metric tonnes found in Abakaliki ,EbonyiState.The Building industry stands to gain a lot in the non-metalic mineral deposit category ,in terms of crushed rock ,gravel and sand ;glass making grade sand according to source and spread across the country .About 100million metric tonnes of Talc deposits cover several States such as Niger, Osun ,Kogi and Ogun States .This is interesting given the fact only a mere fraction is used up in a couple of medium sized Talc processing plants .

Gemstone mining is booming and it includes ruby,Topaz,aquamarine,garnet ,amethyst, emerald,tarmarine,zircon,fluorspar .Constituents of the mud such as bentonite and barytes are used up during drilling activity of oil wells .They are also in abundance with some 7.5million metric tonnes of barytes deposit found in Taraba State and Bauchi State and a whooping 700million metric tonnes of Bentonite spread across the country .A staggering 42 billion metric tonnesof heavy oil that is twice the current size of the nation ‘s current crude oil reserves was found deposited in Bitumen Unfortunately still most of the bitumen used in road construction are currently being imported . Have you heard about the fact that Nigeria has the world largest deposit of lead and zinc like we have in gas ,bitumen and do you know she was the largest exporter of columbite ?

Organised mining was reported to have begun by 1903 when the British colonial government created the Mineral Survey of the Northern Protectorates .In 1904 ,similar measures and institution was extended to the Southern protectorate so that by 1940s ,based on favourable survey findings , Nigeria was a major exporter and producer of Columbite ,Tin and Coal .This shows historically ,it was the foremost and first major source of revenue before agriculture even before discovery of oil in 1956 .There is no doubt that if resuscitated can earn 2 trillion dollars per annum to the federal government if well exploited with the right strategy and most appropriate mechanism .

NIGERIA AS A HAVEN FOR SOLID MINERALS :ESTIMATED WEALTH POTENTIALS AND DEMOGRAHY

MOURNING EARTH

This poem is inspired by Soyinka’s poem-Dedication for Moremi-1963

Mourning earth will not placate the mourner’s clump

Hanging like a torrent rain as sediment of walrus moustache

Binged by tides of mourning earth,

Broken Stalemate arises to break again ;the trammel of dunghill

metaphors ,

Not the mourner’s heaps and cubicles to salvage fait accompli

A messenger of hell,froth to mesh gaiety of wit with misery

Andperadventure plodsaplomp morn,

The space of time and nature will not permit muster to moss,

To deny satisfaction of the winds that comes from mourning

And night ,evening and morning grow only as nuisance to themselves

And the soulthat plunges into the deep is decked , ranching fetid –a

fever pitch ,

It festoons misery and the burning of the flesh –a fingerprint thumbprints

of the pie.

The tide of mourning tides turns away the tide of morning tides ,

And grief and despair barricading apotheosis,are nothing but strangers

And strangebed

fellows of Gordian knots, reef knots and the canyon of

golden morn,

Grief stricken indisposed miens hanging like the broken reeds of sunny

Times.

The forest roots interred beneath earth cubicles and the forester soon to

Foreshadow rising biles upon the earth’s lachrymal floor.

Obtuse emotivity ,pent up sobbing eyes ,burning cheeks now hanging

Like torrent rain ,

Burrowed earth is never satisfied nor deadpanned to gulp the deep of the

Biosphere,

Mourner’s clump swollen and bilging like the binding bit ,bills and coos the

mourning tides with the torrents like the seas to the Atlantic ,

The bowls of the mourning earth shot by its archers—the boors of the

boover-boot-lickers,

The pale maverick , the bohemians and recusant red-cent of the artificial

misery, the liveries of borrowed times,

Mourning earth will not repay its holder with bliss,a sinking sands

Of the apocalypse.

Sunk shores ,mellowed dusk ,claustrophobiac,agoraphobiac and melded

Sometimes with cantankerous schizophrenia ,

Chargrin and consternation engross burning cheeks and protruding eyes ,

Melancholia and sepulcher in its fiendish feathers smiles at the catapults ,

Trapped by boohoos ,bone-idled at the eleventh hour by torrent rain to fret

Solace.

Of diaphanous belch ,a wedge round the heart ,a deadweight conundrum

of the psyche,

Wriggling visage texture and its burrowed lines in horror of the bulls ‘eyes –

melancholy,

Spinning round the hewn of smattering lips merrying to jocund its jocular

Jockey,

A neoplasm of the spirit,the soul and body and sclerosis of the mind.

Burning cheeks shred by apathy is food for remorse ,sometimes protracted

On the lips ,

Weary to the soul and sometimes voice like foghorn ,fattens not with the

foggiest bank

A foible of moors,a farrago of sentiments and a quipped pall of salad days

Re-ignited ,

Sometimes ,it is the gift of nature from the purity of the soul and a benediction

To the mores of the medes and Persia

How to foam its nebula till cloister –itself –a hassle for the gods , the bone

marrow ,and a terror gun for emotive sailor.

Rudderless shores coast home fast,banks of sav-oir-faire sunk beneath sea-

Shores,

Trod ding and prodding on the fossilized sands of the mourning but scorched

earth ,

Crackpots and crackbrained ,unscrewed heads and rottened crabs catching

crab,

Flocking the fickle street like the screeching owl not backwatered by every terror dent

To bemuse their fantasy.

Wail no more and let nature be at the naivety of slavish ado,unleashed or done to the

Tendons,

Of cantankerous sobbing ,miffed veins tearing apart the bone marrow to

smithereens;

Of the swivellers ,snugging snobbery of camaraderies,from the womb

Of nature ,plainant s’ music turns deaf,

Morning turns not cricket to pay homage to the night and the nature’s

gift ,

A crevices of the innate ,a snowball chance in hell ,burgeons like the

eternity’s spring ,

The chemistry lines in thefaces intermittently at the cleft recumbent of

fleeting pulses

Behold, are invariably burrowed to mourn and to deplete pent up catharsis of the

Human psyches,

The seedlings of the spasmodic spanners ,sownand thrown at works .

Gulping the torrents of the burrowed lines as augury of the artesian wells

Of the mourning reservoir ,

Hidden within nature’s plow and heypresto mourning turns skyward wreathed

With the torrent rains ,and sewer ed cud for solemn hours of penitence ,

Culdesac-ed with the boom town and counterpoise of nocturnal beds

Still yet to emerge from exile,from the galumph of mourning tides,

The mourning tides will not deny its task-master and slave trader,

Like a vertigo hurled to tide in the stormy days ,until the mourner’s

Clump relieves as timely balm and neuro-therapy ,

That maddening clouds of smattering and battering lips dancing on the

canvas,

Turpedoed by windy tremor is tinged with no remission ,quested upon

the nature’s gavel ,

The mourning tides sing to be coronated at the mere volleys of its brisky

darts-forth fire to blossom its curio as the junketing snick of time ,

As it sings its revels and the earth dances cloister’s riverie, nature’s

rhythm of rhapsody ,

To ride rough shod ,rough-hewn lugubrious savages ,overwhelms the

Maddening clouds and its curly unkempt of rodomontade,

And the moon and the stars grow only to themselves sarcasm of time.

Mourning earth sings in vile and the tempest of the jockeys not yet a

forlorn mileage of divertimentos,

Scram not away ,secularise wit and read the riddle to debunk conundrum

Of the fossilized sands and cosset similitude and ados of slavish free traffic ,

Of marooned junk art and maelstromed soldier of fortune ,that pays not where,

Solecism sells solemnity for a free man ,

Of mourning servomechanism to racketeer,adumbrated tendons cowed to utter ,

Of nocturbedbeds ,cavorting the deafness of absence ,of gilded moors of fate , in

Trenches ,boored by sarcasm of time ,barned by crumbling earth beneath,

To leaden floors of unborn mornings ,born and jailed in a sunk caisson,

Of forest and forest land that deny its forester ‘s regalia,solicitude ,though ,

Splendiferous and exuberant, to gavel atonement ,splenetic,splitting and spluttering,

Wails afar off,

And the morning and the evening grow only to themselves sarcasm of time .

December 15, 2015

MY EARTH CRUST

Save Me The Thought Of Mine Ontology And The Orgy And Libido Of My Cradle , Nor The Hollowness Of My Being And The Shallowness Of My Earth Crust , That They Say Speaks Guille Of My Sovereign Indeterminate Aggrandised Human Superior . At That Sallowed Ends That They Never Ceased To Latch Onto ,bunting Of Hell Grimaces Splenetic Raccooned Soldier Of Fortune ,and the World Is Forever Divided And Forever Unequal. To Buzz Out By-gones Be By-gones At The Bicker Of Clueless Troth Even eternity Wails To Unravel The Byzanthine.Judge Me Not By The Colours Of My Skin But By The Colour Of My Thoughts And Thus Concedes Aryanism To The Dust Bin Of History. They Never Contemplate Loss Of Power And How Volatile A Warped Mordernity There Is To Eternity.The Earth 'burrowing Fields Betrays Me And None Warmth Like Glazebo Or A Summerhouse To Hide My Disdain And In Whose Bossom Would I Burrow For Warmth? Frangible By Burnish ,my Earth Crust Moans For Pending Apocalypse And Burnt Out Not With The Foggiest Bank ,then Beware

December 12, 2015

AN INTERVIEW WITH OGA BELLO-Part one

ADEBAYO SALAMI

Adebayo Salami ,one of the oldest thespians in the Nigerian movie industry popularly known as Oga Bello ,in an interview with the Ibikunle Laniyan the blogger unveils his checkered antecedence in an incandescent career that spans over 50 years .His concerns and challenges in the tortuous journey of shaping and reshaping the destiny of the industry are hereby unleashed below.Enjoy the reading.

Q—Who is Oga Bello-world acclaimed world famous Oga Bello?

A---Oga Bello is a character .Oga Bello is quite different from Adebayo Salami .If you are asking people who is Adebayo Salami is quite different from asking for who is OgaBello.Oga Bello is somebody who is interpreting the role of a particular character ,in the script.Depend on the script ,depend on the character ,they want Oga Bello to wear.

Q—Tell me about your background ?

A—My name is Adebayo Salami and I was born in Lagos State here and I hailed from Kwara State in Ilorin to be precise.I was born 64 years ago come May ,2015 …… .I was born in the year ,1952 ,I have all my education here in Lagos ,Sandwichcourses (‘’that time’’reporter chipped in;’’Yea’’he echoed],…London,Paris…….

Q—And they are all on film productions..?

A—Yea, all on stage and film productions.

Q—Available information says that you are 50years a thespian ,how do you feel ?

A—Well,there is no any feeling that….i thank.I have to thank God for making me ,for giving the grace (reporter thumped and mildly screamed’’half a century! Ah….’’he replied in a soft tone ‘’Yea’’.].I thank God in every aspect come to raising of my family ,come to excell……….in my chosen career ,I thank God ……..for recognition and up till now am still reckoned with .

Q—Can you mention five men like that who have spanked hal f a century ?

A—There are many people like that .In the entertainment industry or movie industry?

Q—No,in the movie industry

A—Somebody like Tunde kilani, somebody like Baba Wande ,Jimoh Aliu ,JideKosoko….

Q—Maybe is special because you start very early

A—Yea

Q—Since you started ,how many films have you done and produced ?

A—(he paused drawling making a phone call and then retraced momentum after it was asked again]Well,the issue of acting is a two way thing .The one I produced ,I can count ,is 22 films ,but the one I acted ,I have lost count.

Q—What informed the formation of Young Star concert party ?

A—Well,they are young people that have talent ,gather together to display their talent ,hoping to be a star in the future.That is why ,we called it ,’’Young Star Concert’’.

Q—There is a story that says it was the Young Star Concert that metarmorphosed into…..*(cuts in]

A—Yes,…….into Ojo Ladipo theatre group .It was OjoLadipo ,that was leading it before ,there was a lot of misunderstanding ,some fracas .Some people left the Young Star Concert Party ,some of us went with Ojo Ladipo himself.

Q—Who are your mentors in the industry ?

A—One is Chief Hubert Ogunde ,Alhaji Aina Olumegbon both of them late ….and the third is Ade Love ..

Q—What can you say about these mentors and their influence on your career ?

A—Well ,let me start from Hubert Ogunde.Hubert Ogunde inspired me you understand ,to be an actor because I watched his program on television titled ‘’Village Doctor’’ and I want to be somebody like him Talking about Olumegbon ……..i remember ,I usually go to his rehearsals and whenever , I get home I imitate him ,from there ,I respect him so much and he knows me before he died and mentored me .Papa Ogunde ,I have the opportunity of meeting him ,despite the fact ,he inspired me far ,far away but I eventually came close to him. Yea I was close to him and he taught me many things ,so many things ,advice …

Q—They say is occultic ?

A—Is a God fearing person ,is a christian (laughing to debunk my unfounded fear].So,religion is quite different form culture .So,is a two different thing …………So,coming down to Ade Love now ,I learn a lot from him practically .

Q—Taxi Driver Fame

A—Yea,I was his production manager ,Taxi Driver Fame part one,part two ,Iyani wura , Ija Orogun ….and we were very close as well.

Q—Who actually started the Nigerian film industry some people linked it to Alade Aromire ?

A—No,no,no,……..you cannot throw away Celluloid .We have two formats in the film industry –the one we were shooting then and celluloid because at that we could not even get anything locally here ,you want to do production ,you have to go America ,you want to do post production ,you go to U.K.I shot my first film on celluloid in 1985 .At the time ,we were shooting there was no local equipment except you get them overseas .

Q—Which other technology at that time do you think was in vogue apart from celluloid?

A—If they want to do television production ,they use Umatic

Q—What do they mean by 35 mm?

A—That is celluloid .We have 65mm,35 mm,55min, 16mm .Ade love shot on 16mm.

Q—Why depends on 16 mm?

A-–It depends on the cost ,So Alade,Aromire started by experiment , experimental.He did an experiment on home video on VHS .At that time ,when the economy started crushing,none of us could afford to afford to sponsor celluloid anymore .And if you raise funds by loan or by anything to fund this movie,how do you recoup your money ?

Q—There was piracy at that time too?

A-–No Piracy

Q—You mean’’no piracy!’’

A—Yes ,no piracy then .If there is piracy ,it was minute ,not common ,not known talking of 80s

Q—Even this 80s?

A-–uhmm….So,at that time ,it was Aromire that started home video by experimenting ……….because we did not have money to shoot on celluloid anymore . We didn’t believe home video would be popular

Q—Which technology were they using in advanced countries that time ?

A-–Celluloid

Q—So,as you were moving away from Celluloid ,they were also leaving Celluloid at that time?

A—Yes

To be contd.