A member of the House of Representatives, Mr Farah Dagogo, has alleged that the Presidential Artisanal Gold Mining Development Initiative of the Federal Government is a plot for resource control, saying it is “heavily skewed to favour a particular part of the country.”

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The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), had, on July 16, 2020, officially presented a locally mined gold bar made by PAGMDI to the Central Bank of Nigeria, for which the apex bank paid N268m for 12.5kg of gold.

Buhari had said PAGMDI would help reshape gold mining activities in Nigeria and prevent loss of value to illegal miners and smugglers.

Dagogo, in a statement by his Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, titled ‘PAGMDI is a cover for Resource Control – Rep,’ on Thursday, noted that the majority of gold deposits in Nigeria was found in the North, while a larger percentage of crude oil and gas was found in the South.

The lawmaker, who represents Degema/Bonny Federal Constituency of Rivers State, however, described PAGMDI as a smokescreen perfected to enable miners be fully responsible for the sale and distribution of their natural resources (gold) in their areas, unlike what is tenable in the South.

He stated that with the way PAGMDI was structured, it was 100 per cent derivation revenue where gold was found, while the oil and gas producing communities in the South were getting just 13 per cent derivation revenue.

Dagogo said, “The whole PAGMDI scheme is a smokescreen for resource control. It is all semantics designed to deceive Nigerians but heavily skewed to favour a particular section of the country.

“The Nigerian government had, at several times, denied the South-South, the South-East and the South-West the right to control their resources. Why then will you allow the North to control its resources through the cover of PAGMDI?

“It begs the question as to why the Federal Government has not extended similar rush of gusto to the South-South and other regions.”