On Wednesday, Kayode Fayemi, Minister of Mines and Steel announced that there’ll be a few changes at his ministry following resolutions made at the Federal executive Council meeting which was presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari.

The Federal Executive Council approved a new roadmap for the growth and development of the nation’s mining sector and the renaming of the Federal Ministry of Solid Minerals to Federal Ministry of Mines and Steel Development.

According to him, the new roadmap, which is built on the old roadmap, seeks to grow the contribution of mining to the Gross Domestic Products (GDP) in line with the Federal Government’s determination to further diversify the nation’s economy.

Now, under this new roadmap, there would be an independent regulatory agency for the mining industry.

That is the worrying part. It is understandable that some reforms have to go on within the Ministry to actualize all the plans to include mining as a revenue generation avenue for the country. In fact, if already isn’t generating revenue, then it means changes have to be made to the status quo ensure this happens.

Whether a name change is one of the reforms that will make things happen is still in doubt. What is not in doubt is that creating a new regulatory body is not what that Ministry needs. It is also not what Nigeria needs.

The Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun has just confirmed the country is in recession. Granted, things have been bad for a while now but now that it’s confirmed, things are not likely to look up soon. Our GDP is reported to have slid from -2.06% as at April to -0.36%.

Analysts have started calling for an emergency to be declared on the economy to avoid this recession blowing out into a full depression. The country does not need to be spending any extra on creating and maintaining any other agencies than what is already on ground. In fact, if there is anything we do not need, it is this proposed regulatory body.

The National Bureau of Statistics’ Gross Domestic Product figures show that there has been some growth in the solid minerals sector and that should be maintained and not tampered with.

If this new roadmap needs a regulatory body to be properly implemented, there’s surely an arm of the Ministry that can handle the extra responsibility. Fayemi already announced that the Inspectorate, Environmental Compliance and the Artisans and Small Scale units of the ministry would form part of the regulatory agency. Rather than form part of a new regulatory agency and then the staff being entitled to extra payment for being on official assignment outside of the Ministry, these arms should be granted enough autonomy to be able act as a regulatory body.

This way, we’ll be saving costs while improving a sector that has been earmarked as one of those than can save the country from its heavy reliance on crude.

What we’ve asked for is diversification and not additional recurrent expenses.