Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, on Thursday ordered the immediate suspension of mining activities in the state as a means of curbing security threats emanating from that area.

He gave the directive at the meeting held with Kwande stakeholders at the Benue State Government House, Makurdi.

The governor said the activities of miners were already posing threat to the peace of the state.

He said that the state government would set up committees at state, local government and ward levels to regulate the activities of the miners.

He said, “Recent events in the Kwande Local Government Area are posing danger and threat to the peace in council and the state in general and this is as a result of mining activities in the area.

“We know that there are some miners with licences from the Federal Government because it is the responsibility of Federal Government to grant licences.

“We know that some of the miners don’t have licences; we have foreigners and indigenous ones among them.

“As a result of the danger the activities of the miners pose in the state, we hereby suspend all mining activities in the state including those with licences.

The governor asked all licensed miners to register with the state Ministry of Land, Survey and Solid Minerals.

The Republic of the Niger, Republic of Benin and Togolese Republic did not pay a N5.86 billion electricity debt in 2020 from an invoice of N16.31bn issued to them by the Nigerian Electricity Market (NEM) for the year.

According to the report for 2020 released by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), the companies for each of the countries are Societe Nigerienne d’electricite (SNE), Societe Beninoise d’Energie Electrique (SBEE) and Compagnie Energie Electrique du Togo (CEET) respectively.

The remittances showed that the Nigerian Market Operator (MO) gave the countries N16.31bn from which they paid N10.45bn for the services received from MO, while N5.86bn was outstanding.

Ajaokuta Steel Company Ltd, termed a special customer in Nigeria, and its host community did not pay anything after consuming N1.08bn worth of electricity in the year. The invoice from Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET) to the company was N930m, while that of MO was N150m. NERC recommended in the report that, “MO and NBET must activate the relevant safeguards against continued non-settlement of market obligations by these market participants.”

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Also, in 2020 NERC issued five new generation licences and renewed three others which would add 667.70 megawatts (MW) to the grid. The new licences can add 235MW while the renewed licences were for 346MW capacity of electricity generation. It also gave approval to 33 Meter Asset Providers (MAPs) and certified 17 Meter Service Providers (MSPs).

On metering, the report indicated that 537,400 meters were installed for consumers in 2020, a 60.4 per cent higher figure than the 334,896 meters installed in 2019.

Despite this, the huge metering gap for end-use customers is still a key challenge in the industry. Registered customers grew to 11,841,819 (11.8m) in 2020 but just 4,666,191 (4.6m) or 39.40 per cent of them were metered.

“Therefore, 60.60 per cent of the registered electricity customers are on estimated billing contributing to apathy toward payment for electricity bills,” it stated.

Daily Trust