No, Nigeria has not sold its minerals to America

By Nkanu Egbe

The “$700bn minerals deal” with Washington commits no money, transfers no ownership and has no projects attached. What it does do — and what it leaves unanswered — deserves closer scrutiny than the headlines have given it.

Within hours of the announcement, the claim was everywhere. Nigeria, social media declared, had signed a $700 billion minerals deal with the United States. In some versions, the Tinubu administration had “sold” the country’s solid minerals to America.

Neither is true. What Nigeria signed in New York on 23 September is a framework — a statement of intent to cooperate. It contains no investment figure from the US side, transfers no mineral rights and, by the minister’s own account, has no projects attached yet.

The $700 billion is not the value of the deal. It is the Federal Government’s own estimate of what Nigeria’s mineral deposits are worth — a figure that, three years after it was first announced, still has no published breakdown.

That does not make the agreement meaningless. But understanding what it is, and what it is not, requires separating the signing ceremony from the substance.

What was actually signed

The agreement was signed and exchanged on Wednesday, 23 September 2026, at Nigeria’s Mission House in New York, on the sidelines of the 81st UN General Assembly. Dele Alake, Minister of Solid Minerals Development, signed for Nigeria. Christopher Landau, US Deputy Secretary of State, signed for Washington.

The ministry describes it as a “framework for American investment in Nigeria’s $700 billion mineral resources”. Its stated scope covers four areas: geological data and exploration; mineral development and processing; infrastructure; and technical capacity.

Its purpose, in the ministry’s words, is to use the government-to-government relationship as a foundation for business-to-business transactions. In plain terms, the two governments have agreed to open doors. Whether American companies walk through them is another matter.

Alake was candid that the signing is a starting point. In the coming months, he said, the two sides would identify viable projects and build commercial partnerships.

Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu was among those who witnessed the ceremony, alongside the ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Yusuf Yabo; the Director-General of the Nigerian Mining Cadastre Office, Simon Nkom; the Executive Secretary of the Solid Minerals Development Fund, Fatima Shinkafi; and the Chief Executive of the Nigeria Solid Minerals Company, Martin Imonitie.

The full text of the framework has not been made public.

Five myths, corrected

The second and third points matter most. Since the Minerals and Mining Act 2007, mineral titles in Nigeria have been allocated through the Mining Cadastre Office on a first-come, first-served basis, in a transparent register. An agreement signed in New York does not bypass that system. Any project that emerges from this framework will have to pass through it.

Where the $700 billion comes from

The figure has a history, and it begins well before this administration.

According to official ministry records, in 2005/06 the Ministry of Solid Minerals Development, working with the Nigerian Geological Survey Agency (NGSA) and the Mining Cadastre Office, identified 34 minerals in commercial quantities in some 450 locations.

The figure appears to have grown with the data. By 2022, following the first phase of the NGSA-led National Integrated Mineral Exploration Programme, the then Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Olamilekan Adegbite, was citing 44 minerals in commercial quantities in more than 500 locations across the 36 states and the FCT. These range from industrial minerals such as barite, kaolin and limestone to gold, lead-zinc, iron ore, coal, bitumen and gemstones.

It was this inventory that Alake attached a price to. Speaking on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September 2023, he said Nigeria’s mineral deposits were worth over $700 billion, with huge potential to rise. Defending his ministry’s 2024 budget before the House of Representatives, he described, as reported by News Central, 44 economically viable deposits with a conservative value above $700 billion.

Note the shift: Adegbite spoke of 44 mineral types; Alake of 44 deposits. They may describe the same list. The ministry has not said.

What the ministry has never published is how the figure was calculated — which deposits, what tonnages and grades, at what prices, and by whom. Headline valuations of this kind are typically estimated quantities multiplied by world prices. That is the value of the rock in the ground, not money Nigeria will earn. Extraction and processing costs, investors’ returns and deposits that prove uneconomic all come off the top; the government’s share, through royalties and taxes, is a fraction of what remains.

The minister himself has supplied the strongest caveat. Announcing an exploration agreement with the German firm GeoScan, he said that despite the $700 billion estimate, over 90 per cent of Nigeria’s landscape remains unexplored. When the figure was first announced, PwC’s mining lead in Nigeria, Cyril Azobu, acknowledged the country’s potential but stressed the need for more accurate data to quantify it.

The $700 billion, in short, is a promotional estimate: plausible in direction, unverified in detail.

Twenty years, two World Bank loans

Nigeria has been here before. Building world-class geological data and a credible mining regime has been official policy for two decades — and it has been paid for with borrowed money.

The Sustainable Management of Mineral Resources Project (SMMRP) grew out of a national mining policy dialogue in 2004. The World Bank’s board approved it on 14 December 2004, and the Development Credit Agreement was signed on 24 January 2005. It was a US$120 million credit from the International Development Association, with a further US$7.89 million from the Federal Government, for a total of about US$128 million.

Though some reports at the time described it as a grant, it was a concessional loan, repayable by Nigeria. It became effective in April 2005, was due to close in June 2010 and, after early delays, closed in May 2012. Its officials described it as the World Bank’s largest mining project anywhere in the world. Its objectives were to build the government’s long-term capacity to manage mineral resources and to create income for small-scale and artisanal miners.

What it delivered

• The Mining Cadastre Office. The World Bank’s completion report credited the project with establishing a “well performing and world class” cadastre — the transparent licensing system that, today, makes “signing away the minerals” by memorandum practically impossible.
• National data. The report listed airborne geophysical surveys and geochemical mapping of the country as completed. The geochemical mapping was technical assistance to the NGSA, delivered by the British Geological Survey.
• Clean audits. All 15 financial and procurement audits between 2005 and 2012 were rated satisfactory, bar one rated moderately satisfactory.
• Early growth. The World Bank and its partners reported that estimated mineral production value rose from about US$35 million in 2005 to about US$135 million in 2009, and formal mining employment from about 100,000 to 250,000.

What it did not

In 2011 the World Bank held back an additional US$80 million, saying it first wanted to assess how the earlier funds had been used. The top-up was eventually granted by early 2015, bringing the SMMRP to about US$200 million. Even then, the airborne survey of the remaining 5 per cent of the country — Lagos and the Niger Delta — was listed as unfinished.

In 2013, after the reforms, the World Bank’s country director put mining’s contribution to Nigeria’s GDP at just 0.15 per cent.

A successor project followed. According to a World Bank press release, the Bank’s board approved a further US$150 million credit on 14 April 2017 — the Mineral Sector Support for Economic Diversification Project (MinDiver) — to strengthen the sector’s information infrastructure, knowledge and institutions. The release itself named insufficient geo-data and geological knowledge among the sector’s critical constraints.

Across the two projects, Nigeria has borrowed in the region of US$350 million to build exactly what the new US framework lists first: geological data and exploration capacity.

Two decades in one line

• 2004
  National mining policy dialogue; World Bank board approves the $120m SMMRP (14 December).
• January 2005
  Development Credit Agreement signed; project effective in April.
• 2005/06
  Ministry records: 34 minerals in commercial quantities in ~450 locations.
• 2007
  Minerals and Mining Act 2007 enacted; Mining Cadastre Office gets statutory footing.
• 2011
  World Bank holds back an extra $80m pending a review of earlier spending.
• May 2012
  SMMRP closes; rated satisfactory by the World Bank.
• 2013
  Mining’s share of GDP put at 0.15 per cent.
• Early 2015
  The extra $80m is granted; airborne survey of Lagos and the Niger Delta still pending.
• 2016
  NGSA signs geoscience MoUs with the China Geological Survey.
• April 2017
  World Bank approves the $150m MinDiver credit.
• 2022
  After NIMEP phase 1: 44 minerals in 500+ locations; British Geological Survey engaged on a national geo-data centre.
• September 2023
  Alake values Nigeria’s mineral deposits at “over $700 billion”.
• January 2025
  France pledges to upgrade the NGSA laboratory.
• 23 September 2026
  Nigeria–US minerals framework signed in New York.

Why Washington wants this — and what Nigeria wants

For the United States, this is foreign policy before it is mining. The signatory was a senior State Department official, not a geologist. Washington has been working to secure supply chains for critical minerals — those used in batteries, electric vehicles and renewable energy — particularly since China restricted rare earth exports last year. It has pursued similar arrangements elsewhere, from Ukraine to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Nigeria’s attraction is chiefly lithium, found in pegmatite rocks across Nasarawa, Kwara, Oyo, the FCT and Kebbi, among other states. Chinese firms have so far been the most active foreign investors in Nigerian lithium. The framework is, in part, America’s bid to compete for influence in a sector where Beijing has a head start.

Nigeria’s stated aims are different. The government wants to diversify away from oil, and it says it will not settle for exporting raw ore.

Those two agendas can be complementary. They can also pull apart: a partner seeking secure supply may prefer raw concentrate shipped abroad; a host country seeking value addition wants refineries at home. Which way the projects tilt will be the real test of the framework.

The questions the framework leaves open

Whose data is it?

The Nigerian Geological Survey Agency is the institution charged with knowing what lies beneath Nigeria’s soil. Yet neither the agency nor its Director-General, Prof. Olusegun Ige, was among those named in the ministry’s account of the New York ceremony — even though “geological data and exploration” is the first item in the framework’s scope.

There is a reasonable explanation for the ministry taking the lead. Strategic, government-to-government agreements are typically signed at ministerial level, with technical cooperation following between agencies. That is how it worked with China: a broad mining cooperation memorandum in 2012 was followed in 2016 by geoscience agreements signed directly between the NGSA’s then Director-General, Alex Nwegbu, and the China Geological Survey. The NGSA, a parastatal under the ministry established by the Nigerian Geological Survey Agency Establishment Act 2006, cannot on its own bind the Federal Government to an international agreement.

But the pattern raises a harder question. Over two decades, Nigeria has repeatedly turned to foreign partners to build or rebuild its geological knowledge.

Meanwhile, the NGSA’s then Director-General, Dr Abdulrazaq Garba, told the News Agency of Nigeria that mineral samples were sent abroad for testing after preliminary work in Jos and Kaduna. And when Alake defended his 2024 budget before the House Committee on Solid Minerals, News Central reported that he described the ministry’s ₦29 billion allocation as grossly inadequate and urged lawmakers to raise it to ₦250 billion, largely for exploration.

Nkanu Egbe, Editor of Lagos Metropolitan, was once Personal Assistant to the Minister of Mines and Steel Development in 2006.