Senator Onawo Mohammed Ogoshi represents Nasarawa North, Central Senatorial district in Nasarawa state has maintained that Federal government would have no need engage in external  borrowing to finance budget if it develops our rich solid minerals sector.

In this interview with IGNATIUS OKOROCHA, the lawmaker speaks on other issues of national importance.

Distinguished, your colleague, Senator Kenneth Eze is celebrating his  birthday anniversary today. As a friend of the distinguished Senator,what do you have to say about him?

We thank God for his life. We felicitate with him for coming this far in his political sojourn 

 and we are thanking God for what he has done in his life. He is chairman of a committee that is leading us well.He is a team player and he is somebody that I always like to associate with because any leader who seeks an opinion of those he is leading to be able to lead them  well, is somebody that you would always like to learn from.I  wish him well and pray that he continues to age with grace. I want to assure him that as a young man, this is just the first step of the steps he is going to be climbing and the skey by the grace of God, will be his starting point.

Distinguished, you are from a state that is richly endowed with solid minerals but we are not exploring this huge potentials and Nigeria has been operating a mono-crop economy and this is why the whole nation is suffering today. what is your impression?

My impression is for the leadership of the nation to begin to have a rethink. Oil will soon become a thing of the past, everybody is now thinking towards green energy. Green energy is being generated by solid minerals and the earlier the  government begins to give the solid minerals sector attention to develop, the better for the country

The effort being made to keep the  oil sector afloat, if half of it is given to solid minerals sector, this country would not have to go and borrow money from anywhere. Just look at how much is a barrel of oil?

A barrel of oil is above $80 whereas one gram of solid minerals that you can just put under your finger nail is about 80 something. And so if you have one kilo of gold today, you are taking about eighty  (80,000) something thousand dollars not Naira. So, if we could harness what we have, this country will be better for it and fortunately for us, every local government in Nigeria, (there are about 774 local government areas in Nigeria)have one form of solid minerals or the other just needs to be harnessed.

 All this concentration on oil and the degradation of land  that people can not fish, people can not farm within the oil region, will be a thing of the past. You can easily reclaim land that is dug to bring out a solid minerals. You can’t do that with oil. So,  our government should understand where  the world is tinting to. There so many countries that do not have solid minerals

 They only have one or two major minerals.

What about renewable energy?

Renewable energy or green energy, I just explained that it is sourced from solid minerals. For instance Nigeria has large quantity of bitumen in every part of the country. This particular mineral has made some individuals very rich. Most people don’t even have it in their country and as such  they come to Africa to buy it in large quantity.

So, why don’t we harness what we have. They come to Africa and harvest some of these things and go to their country and process them. We are loosing money. The mineral  they buy for one thousand Naira, they could sell for one million Naira in their home country per gram and they are creating employment for their unemployed youths. Our youths have nothing to do and that is why all these kidnappings and other forms of criminality are striving. So, if we can give attention to the development of the solid minerals sector it will go a long way in improving our revenue

The parliament is an integral part of government, what is the National Assembly doing to ensure that the solid minerals sector is developed to the point that the solid minerals becomes an alternative source of revenue to the Federal government?

Fortunately we just resumed plenary today, we will discuss this burning issue with our chairman and we will also want to have an interaction with the Minister of Solid minerals to see what we can do to help government to push towards that direction. The exiting Act needs to be amended. There  are a lot of clauses that need to be amended. Something urgent needs to be done so that at least progress can be made from where we are. Lots of work need to be done. The legislature and the Executive arm of government will have to work together to push this forward.

As the nation joined the rest of the world to  celebrate the international labour Day last Wednesday  and given the harsh economic situation in Nigerians that has subjected  workers to untold hardship  by the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, how do want  the Federal government to relief this burden on the people?

The government of Bola Ahmed Tinubu came into power  with aim of giving Nigerians hope by removing the fuel subsidy. The ordinary Nigerian thinks that when the subsidy on fuel is removed, his life would be better, cost of transportation would be go down, lots of things are going to changed and these things are not been seen. The workers are groning and the take home pay of ordinary worker in Nigerian is still below expectation compared to his counterparts in some countries of the world. And so, the workers would have to be patient with government. The government just came into office a few months ago and they are just trying to settle down. Let there be discussions between the leadership of labour and the government representatives. Strikes or violence can not provide the need solution. Let there be roundtable dialogue between labour and government to look at the two parties can do. We all have one country, we don’t have any other country except Nigeria and something can only be achieved if we negotiate, if we tell ourselves this is our problem and our leaders look at those problems with the aim of helping to solve those problems. I wish to remind  Nigerian workers that they have endowed for centuries and there light at the end of the tunnel.