I want to appeal to the Federal Government and all the 36 states, as well as the FCT authorities, to ensure they put proactive measures in place in order to effectively curtail and bring to an end, the massive corruption, illegalities, fraudulent activities and practices in the mining sector. These have for long, been a drain pipe, that have denied and deprived the country of earning huge revenue, as contained and highlighted in the report by the African Center for Leadership, Strategy and Development, CLSD, in the Daily Trust edition of Tuesday, September 12, 2017.
This meticulous report and its unique findings, which have given a holistic overview of the large scale, secret but high profile exploitation of Nigeria’s mineral resources by some local crooks and official government employed rogues, who connive to cheat the country, by undermining President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption war in the mining sector.
May I therefore use this opportunity to appeal to the Federal Government to seriously uncover this unsavory cesspool of secret large-scale corruption and impunity by illegal miners, who conspire and connive with some unpatriotic elites, traditional rulers and government officials, to engage in large-scale corruption, sabotage and syndicated economic crimes, against Nigeria and its innocent citizens.
If only their supposed accomplices from the Federal Ministry of Solid Minerals and Steel Development, as well as the Environment Ministry could exert their oversight functions and duties religiously, with utmost due diligence and sense of purpose and responsibility, they can easily identify and track those involved in this monumental economic crime, with proof of their corrupt atrocities, through an unscheduled or surprise inspection visits, to some of the mining sites.
I want to volunteer a serious case study, in need of urgent but high level official visitation at the ministerial level of inspections, or by the Nasarawa State Government, as well as committed NGO’s to see a vivid but disturbing example of how a Nigerian village is subjected to serial destructions by illegal miners, with tacit but criminal support from the local chiefs and coterie of his corrupt elites.
This proposed mining site is my small village of Angwandoka, in Kokona Local Government Area of Nasarawa State, which has been exposed and subjected to long years of crude and unrelenting illegal mining activities since colonial times.
My final take on these illegal mining activities, is that, neither the Federal Government, nor the local communities are beneficiaries; only the corrupt traditional rulers, their handpicked elites and corrupt official are indiscriminately milking the vast sector that holds the greatest promise, as a major source of income. This viable sector is left to the personal temptations and indiscriminate vortex of corrupt gangsters, as if we in Nigeria have no rules or standard policies, terms and standards to obey or terms of contractual engagements to comply with.
Consequently, it is imperative for the Federal Government to invoke its powers by involving and empowering the EFCC, ICPC, the SSS, and all its critical agencies of facilitations in anti corruption and other related criminal and major economic crimes assignments, to monitor trail and prosecute all perpetrators involved.
Abdulkarim M. Abdullahi, Keffi, Nasarawa State
