Market News
Nigeria loses gemstone wealth as miners export raw stones - PUNCH
Nigeria is losing thousands of jobs and billions of naira in potential earnings by exporting gemstones in their raw form instead of processing them into finished products, stakeholders in the mining sector have warned.
They called for the establishment of gemstone processing clusters, affordable financing, improved security and sustained skills development to enable local operators to capture more value from the country’s mineral resources.
The stakeholders spoke at the just concluded 11th Nigeria Mining Week on Wednesday in Abuja, where industry players stressed that Nigeria could build a competitive gemstone and jewellery industry by investing in cutting, treatment, grading, branding and manufacturing instead of relying largely on the extraction and export of raw stones.
The Country Manager of Adelia, Segun Okoh, said Nigeria needed a coordinated system that would continuously develop skilled workers and entrepreneurs while connecting mining communities to the entire gemstone value chain.
Citing Tanzania’s experience, Okoh advocated the establishment of processing clusters where mining, grading, cutting and jewellery production would take place within the same geographical area.
He said, “The first is to create a system. It’s not a case of, train some sets now, send them out, then wait. No, create a system whereby it’s kind of like a machine line, churning out the right people in the right places for those who want to.
“Secondly, we have to ensure that they can speak the language, and the language is pretty much financial language, because if they have the skill sets and they understand the financial language. Then, we can say we can start entrepreneurial initiative.”
According to him, access to business knowledge and capital is essential to converting technical skills into viable enterprises that can employ more Nigerians.
Okoh said the cluster model would reduce the cost of moving gemstones between mining locations and processing centres while ensuring that communities benefited from the additional value created.
He added that Nigeria needed standardised quality control and a system that rewarded operators who complied with regulations rather than those who relied on shortcuts.
Similarly, the Chief Executive Officer of Laurel School of Mines, Tope Adebanjo, said Nigeria was surrendering economic opportunities by allowing valuable gemstones to leave the country without adequate processing.
Adebanjo said his institution was established in 2013 to develop entrepreneurs in gemstone and jewellery production, adding that Nigeria needed to build the skills required to manufacture products for domestic and international markets.
He identified gemstone treatment, enhancement, evaluation and jewellery making as critical areas requiring investment.
“When we get the stone, what do we do with it? You have to enhance it. Enhancement is key. But what we do in Nigeria is that we just take them out raw like than create more employment for the people over there,” he said.
Adebanjo cited Thailand as an example of a country that had developed a major gemstone and jewellery industry despite not possessing the same level of natural gemstone resources as countries that export raw stones.
He said Nigeria should support entrepreneurs who could transform locally mined minerals into finished products, rather than concentrate on extraction alone.
The President of the Gemstones Miners and Marketers Association of Nigeria, Engineer Adeniran Ajibade, also called for sustained training, better branding and improved access to domestic and international markets.
Ajibade said Nigeria needed to develop its gemstone identity and improve the quality of products presented to international buyers to secure better prices.
He stressed that training interventions should be continuous and cover the entire value chain, including mining techniques, processing, jewellery making and marketing.
“It is not a question of duplication of this skill. It is a question of proliferation of this skill. Let’s look at how many of them we can train from each local government”, he said.
