By Chijioke Okoronkwo
The Nigeria Mining Cadastre Office (NMCO) says it recently published a list of defaulters numbering 3,032 and also revoked 3,402 titles.
Mr Obadiah Nkom, the Director-General of NMCO, disclosed this while featuring in the State House briefing organised by the Presidential Communications Team on Thursday in Abuja.
Nkom regretted that some people holding titles were not using them, hence the implementation of the use-it or lose-it principle.
“And we are very transparent.
“If you need the Certified True Copy of any document, an application belonging to anybody or any licence or whatever, the law permits us to give it to you because anything we are doing can be a subject to litigation.
“Like we said, in terms of revoked titles, recently we published a list of defaulters numbering 3,032 and we have revoked titles of 3,402.
“We equally have people that have grants; they have been communicated, but when you cancel it; you see lawyers writing us about following the provisions; we have gazetted them, that is what the law says.
“We have gazetted 495 for people who have grants because we are going to cancel them when the time elapses.”
He said there were also people who were issued licences but refused to collect them.
According to him, the law provides that such defaulters should be gazetted before action is taken.
“You send letters to the applicant’s address and if after 30 days he does not remedy the defect, you revoke or you gazette.
“As much as we appreciate communication, some people will look for windows for excuses to give in Court; but once it is on the gazette, we ensure we put it on our website so that you don’t have any excuse.
“The gazette is final, we now have those ones to arm ourselves with so that, at the end of the day, we know what it is to lose a case.”
Nkom also disclosed that the office generated over N3.7billion in 2022. (NAN) (www.nannews.ng)