By: OrePulse

Nigeria's Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dr. Dele Alake, said Wednesday that Nigeria has not sold $700 billion in mineral assets to the United States, pushing back against claims that have circulated widely in recent days. Alake made the remarks while inaugurating the Nigeria-United States Committee on Strategic Cooperation in the Solid Minerals Sector.

The minister said the committee follows a strategic cooperation framework agreed during the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. He described the resulting memorandum of understanding as a government-to-government arrangement meant to facilitate business-to-business ties between American investors and Nigerian mining operators, rather than a transfer of ownership over Nigerian mineral assets or control over the country's security apparatus.

"There is no sale of any Nigerian asset," Alake said, adding that the text of the agreement had been published in national newspapers. He described reports characterizing the arrangement as a $700 billion sale of Nigerian minerals, or as ceding security control to the United States, as misinformation.

Alake also set out broader government policy for the solid minerals sector. He said Nigeria's minerals industry has historically been largely informal, with ores exported with little local processing, and that federal rules now require investors to present local-processing plans before they can be granted mineral titles. He said this local-content requirement is intended to keep more of the value created by mineral extraction inside Nigeria rather than exporting it unprocessed.

The minister pointed to new processing capacity as evidence the policy is already bearing fruit, citing what he described as West Africa's largest lithium-processing plant, commissioned in Nasarawa State by Vice President Kashim Shettima.

Jonathan Baas, an economic officer at the US Embassy, spoke at the same event. He said US priorities in the relationship include energy, artificial intelligence and critical minerals, and that Washington wants its partners to help secure supply chains while also sharing in the value those supply chains create. He referred to a contract recently signed covering artificial intelligence data centers in Nigeria, without giving further detail.

The dispute over how to characterize the Nigeria-US minerals cooperation comes as Abuja seeks to expand foreign investment in its solid minerals sector. Nigeria holds deposits of minerals including lithium, tin and gold, and the government has said it wants the sector to become a bigger contributor to the economy alongside oil and gas production.

The episode illustrates sensitivities around foreign involvement in Nigeria's mineral wealth, as the government seeks to attract outside capital and technical expertise while addressing domestic concern over resource sovereignty. Such concerns have surfaced before around large-scale foreign investment proposals in Nigeria's extractive industries. Officials have stressed that cooperation agreements of this kind, in their telling, do not involve ceding ownership or control of mineral deposits to a foreign government, and that the goal is attracting capital and expertise rather than transferring assets.

Neither Alake nor Baas provided further detail at the event on the new committee's specific powers or on which projects, if any, it will oversee.