President Bola Tinubu is billed to visit Nasarawa State later this month to commission 6,000-metric-ton lithium processing plant, in what officials described as another milestone in Nigeria’s push to curb raw mineral exports and expand domestic value-addition.
Nasarawa State Governor, Abdullahi Sule disclosed this to State House correspondents on Wednesday after a closed-door meeting with President Tinubu at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The governor said the new plant, located in Nasarawa local government area was built by Chinese investors and was twice the size of the 3,000MT facility launched in the state in 2023.
He explained that the President promised to perform the commissioning immediately after returning from his upcoming two-week stay in France.
“They said they were going to build a bigger one, they have just concluded building it, and it is ready for commissioning. Mr. President promised that on his return from his short vacation, he’s going to come to Nasarawa to commission the project,” the governor said.
The Nasarawa plant is one of several Chinese-backed projects springing up across the state after exploratory surveys confirmed commercial-grade lithium deposits.
The federal government has in recent years adopted beneficiation policies to ban unprocessed lithium exports and encourage investors to set up in-country processing hubs, following examples in Indonesia’s nickel and Zimbabwe’s lithium sectors.
Governor Sule noted that the investors were drawn by the sheer quality and scale of deposits in Nasarawa, describing the plant as a step toward positioning Nigeria as a regional hub for lithium-ion battery and solar panel manufacturing.
“Because of how excited they were with the quality of lithium and the commercial deposit they noticed, they fulfilled their promise to build something bigger,” he added.
Sule also linked the investment flow to reforms implemented under Tinubu’s administration, including the removal of petrol subsidies and the unification of the naira’s exchange rate, which he said had boosted state revenues.
“Instead of borrowing from the banks, we are now utilising the improved resources that we have,” the governor said, adding that infrastructure expansion in Nasarawa was benefitting directly from federal fiscal reforms.
