Since her fortuitous appointment as the Executive Secretary of the Solid Minerals Development Trust Fund (SMDTF), Hajiya Fatima Umaru Shinkafi has taken far-reaching steps to transform the vital solid minerals sector for the best in accordance with internationally recognised best practices and in consonace with the Renewed Hope Agenda of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration.
With her wealth of experience and depth of technical expertise gained from her trailblazing academic, professional and public service career, Hajiya Fatima Shinkafi has steadfastly put in place policy reforms that have crucially restructured and repositioned the sector for a more credible and responsive service delivery to the Nigerian people.
For instance, under a visionary Hajiya Shinkafi the Solid Minerals Fund introduced a landmark Strategic Investment Philosophy, anchored on three unique portfolios: SMDF Growth, SMDF Opportunities, and SMDF Responsible Mining. These portfolios are a well calibrated approach to sustainable financing, enabling the SMDF to attract private investments while maintaining a focus on environmental and social governance.
Another remarkable reform initiative anchored by Hajiya Umaru Shinkafi is the Presidential National Gold Purchase Programme, a program that has skillfully enabled Nigeria’s first commercial gold transaction.
This trailblazing transaction has dramatically raised the country’ profile in the global gold market, providing new revenue pathways and signposting Nigeria’s readiness to exploit the global demand for gold and other precious minerals.
The Agro-Minerals Development Programme is another milestone project unveiled by the proactive Executive Secretary aimed at encouraging private sector investment in fertilizer production.
This initiative crucially tackles the twin issues of food security and agricultural productivity by harnessing Nigeria’s rich agro-mineral resources, thus ensuring that the mining sector supports the agrarian sectors of the nation’s economy.
All these bold policies and programs would not have carried much weight if the SMDF supremo had not moved fortuitously to streamline its internal processes for a more credible, responsive and efficient service delivery to the Nigerian people.
In this regard, Hajiya Fatima Shinkafi has ably moved to ensure that applications for funding to carry out minerals exploration and exploitation are handled expeditiously without undue bureaucratic hurdles or red tape while the arcane culture of cronyism and favouritism previously prevailing in the Fund has been roundly dismantled for good.
In fact, the impartial Hajiya Shinkafi has a standing rule that none of the applicants or contractors should seek audience or interaction with any of the top or senior management staff (herself included) especially those involved in the procurement or contract award process.
Once you submit your application or tender, you check out of the Fund premises pronto, no more, no less.
This firm commitment to the hallowed tenets of transparency, accountability, due process and the rule of law has established Hajiya Umaru Shinkafi as a model of credibility, integrity and rectitude in an MDA bureaucratic milleau sometimes riddled with graft, cronyism and shady practices.
Trenchantly, Hajiya Fatima Shinkafi’s leadership style is inclusive, accomodating and open to all persons, opinions, ideas and perspectives irrespective of ethnic, religious, sectional or partisan affiliations as far as they are geared towards moving the Fund and the nation forward in all positive ramifications.
The unassuming but astute Hajiya Umaru Shinkafi has built a credible reputation for resilience, hardwork, competence, unvarnished professionalism and exemplary performance not to talk of her renowned charitable, benevolent and philanthropic disposition.
In Hajiya Shinkafi’s impartial domain, hardworking and competent staff are duly rewarded and promoted while persistent laggards and chronic malcontents are advised to better shape up or be shipped out, no more, no less.
Despite her impressive track record, the steadfast Executive Secretary continues to burn the proverbial midnight oil in selfless service to her beloved fatherland and having delivered decisively on her official mandate of funding the proper development of the solid minerals sector, Hajiya Fatima Umaru Shinkafi has received deserved accolades, honours and garlands from civil society groups, public policy apparatchiks and the media punditocracy
Indeed the sky is not the limit but merely a platform for the enduring Hajiya Umaru Shinkafi to achieve her glorious destiny as denoted by the Almighty God.
To Him we return all the Glory.
BY COMRADE AUSTIN ASADU
CONVENER, CITIZENS UNITED TO SAVE HUMANITY
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