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Nigeria is blessed with about forty-four mineral resources. Despite the enormous resource, Nigeria has struggled to maximise potentials for economic growth, employment creation and revenue diversification with its natural resources.
The Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ), through its Natural Resources and Extractives Programme, is holding a three-day virtual training for journalists in Nigeria to improve reporting around the Natural Resources sector.
Nigeria has about 38bn barrels of unexplored bitumen resources weighing about 42.74 billion metric tonnes. It ranks 6th in the list of countries with the most bitumen wealth. Nigeria’s untapped bitumen can be found Ogun, Ondo, Delta, Rivers, and Balyesa States. Geologically, Nigeria’s bitumen reserves have close similarities with the bitumen reserves in Canada and it is envisaged if Nigeria’s bitumen would be extracted, similar methods as have been used in Canada would be adopted. In view of this, similar impacts are envisaged between the two countries.
Two separate audit reports by the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative have revealed the Nigerian government diverted a whopping sum of N908.63 billion meant for the Natural Resource Development in ten years.
