You are a woman in a sector regarded as tough even for men, how are you coping?
I can tell you sincerely that Women are even getting tougher with mining than men now. I don’t see any gender barrier that prevents women from meeting up as men in that regard. We have many women that are into mining business today and they doing well.
But the minerals are mined in the forest and bushes, how do you think women can cope in terms of stress?
Women tend to be on different sides of mining. Some are into selling, others in the cutting and faceting of the stones, etc. There are different stages, not just one sector. It has a value chain. When it comes to the rough work, they may be a lot more men there but there are women in the bushes too.
What do you do in the industry?
A lot of the minerals, when they are taken in their raw form have little value. When you sell in the raw form, the money you get is very little. So its almost slave labour when you go and sell in its raw state, but the moment you add value by processing it a little, which is changing it by faceting , where we cut the stones into some of the gemstone shapes, we have a better share of the profit margin that comes out of it. At the moment, Nigeria or Africa is getting less than a percent of the value they ought to get because they don’t add value to it. So we are losing a lot of revenue as individuals and as a country because of that lack of value addition. So, we need to close that gap and change the narrative because our people are just suffering and working for free. They suffer and mine this minerals and the sell it at ridiculous prices. We can’t continue like that. The value of this stone are a lot more than we are getting from it. So we want everybody to be educated in the fact that this stones are valuable and we can change the prices we get by adding value to them.
So We are a basically focused on mining and adding value to extracted solid minerals in the country, especially as it concerns the metals such as lead, gold, etc. and gemstones. We have several gemstones like sapphire , ruby, Aquamarine, etc. on several sites. Our project is to uncover as many gemstones as possible that we can find in Nigeria and add value to them.
What are your take-aways from the Nigerian Mining week?
It is amazing being part of a conference like this. First of all, everybody gets to meet each other, the big players in the industry. You get to interact with the government and hear all the project they are trying to do. Because sometimes you don’t really know. So at the Nigeria Mining Week like this, we have time to interact with government and tell them our issues and problems. And from what I have gathered, there are a lot of initiatives, they are coming up with, to support miners such as loans and grants.
We also learnt that they are putting certain things in place and bringing in
companies that can train. I
have to commend the fact that
government has become
more aware of the sector and
they are rising up to the
challenges and getting up to
the same standard as in other rest parts of the world.
Do you think Nigeria as a mining country has the commitment and financial muscles, like other African countries?
I think that Nigeria will soon become a major player in the mining industry. Because in the past there has been underground mining happening where mining is done in the background, but now that everyone is coming up to make the industry more visible, we think that is going to be the beginning of the kind of influx that will change the sector. Because if people know what we have here, there will be a lot of people coming in to the country and that brings in money from travels. Hospitality industry and other industries will benefit if we do this mining right.
