The appointment of members of the President Muhammadu Buhari cabinet, especially the ministers, trended on social media for several days or, perhaps, weeks.
The appointees were ushered into office with several harshtags, including the famous #TheList.
But barely two months after their inauguration, nobody hears about their lofty dreams on digital media platforms anymore.
Save the Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, the key ministers have ignored their social media pastime as they continue their routines.
For one, the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has not updated his Twitter page since May 2, 2015.
The only activity on the page in the past eight months is the removal of the content published on it by ‘Japanese’ hackers who hijacked it last year. He also visited the platform to modify his bio to reflect his current status after he was assigned a ministerial portfolio.
Apart from a few uploads, his Facebook page and website — tundefashola.com — have not been receiving sufficient attention neither.
Also missing out on the excitement on the digital space is the Minister of Transport and former governor of Rivers State, Chibuike Amaechi. The only change made on the page since he was appointed is the rebranding of the profile.
Occasionally, Ameachi, whose appointment appeared the most scrunitised on digital media, retweets.
However, Fashola, Fayemi and Amaechi, who social media users have described as the frontline ministers, are not all missing out on the digital space, after all. Fayemi has kept faith with his fans, posting his official activities regularly.
Solid minerals debate is one hard issue one rarely finds on Nigeria’s digital media conversation. Yet, Fayemi has damned the challenge and is engaging Nigerians on opportunities and challenges the sector, which experts say has been unfairly ignored for too long, faces.
Tweeting on #StateofSolidMinerals, the minister said, “We have, at least, 44 known mineral assets that comprise precious minerals, base metals, bulk and rare earth minerals. Our most promising mineral assets include gold, iron ore, baryte, bitumen, lead, zinc, tin and coal.
“We have barely updated some of the geosciences data collected 50 years ago or earlier. We are cautiously optimistic that our mining endowments actually exceed what is currently stated.
“Based on current data, Nigeria’s solid minerals sector makes up about 0.34 per cent of gross domestic product. And with the current official exchange rates, mining contributes N400bn to the economy.”
Fayemi described the sector’s contribution to the economy as small when compared with its “true potential”. He lamented that the majority of Nigerian natural assets had not been exploited.
Seeking support for full utilisation of the mineral deposits in different parts of the country, he listed limited infrastructure, insufficient geological data, limited cooperative federalism, low productivity and illegal mining as some of the challenges facing the sector.
Others, according to him, are weak institutional capacity, insufficient funding, weak was of doing business and poor perception.
Interestingly — and this is where lies the importance of the story — Fayemi has proved those who think social media users are too ‘soft’ to trend hard stuffs wrong. His tweets on related issues are greeted with massive engagement on issues relating to mining.
Engaging Fayemi on Twitter, one Farid Usman has called for proper fact-finding to identify the true state of the country’s mineral deposits.
“This is because we need to do more to get adequate data representation of our solid mineral data,”Usman said.
For Michael Oluwagbemi, who tweets on @busanga, the government needs to take the major resources for optimal attention. He urged the minister to focus on bauxite, coal and iron, saying tough macroeconomic was a daunting challenge before the ministry.f
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