Ministry Of Mines Says Over N700million Budgeted For Website Updates Is Intended For All ICT Infrastructure Improvement

The attention of the Ministry of Solid Minerals Development has been drawn to social media reports concerning an aspect of the proposed 2016 budget line item of the Ministry with the description “Website Update”. The Ministry has been inundated with requests from well-meaning Nigerians seeking clarifications on the N795,234,275.00 purportedly budgeted for the website update.

In preparation for the 2016 budget, a clear gap highlighted in the work of the Ministry was the need to improve the IT infrastructure and adopt appropriate technology to automate the operations of the Ministry and its agencies.

A number of activities were conceived by the Ministry to address these gaps. These include the acquisition of adequate ICT infrastructure to ensure all required data and business processes are efficiently, effectively and transparently handled. It also involves automation and management of the mining rights/titles with on-line application processing, status tracking and open section for verification of valid mining licenses.

This is to be done through the deployment of an Enterprise Resource Planning Solution across the 10 agencies and 12 departments under the Ministry.

These were submitted to the Budget Office, which summarized it as “WEBSITE UPDATE” which is only a tiny component of the project. This is an error of description. The budget line was intended to address the overall ICT infrastructure improvement in the Ministry and its agencies.

Signed

M.F. Istifanus
Permanent Secretary
Ministry of Solid Minerals Development