2 weeks Ago By Our Correspondents
Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA) has called on the Federal Government and state authorities to enforce strict monitoring and regulatory measures against illegal mining activities to prevent further avoidable tragedies across the country. The group made this known in a statement released over the weekend, in response to the recent collapse of an illegal mining pit located within a national game reserve spanning Gashaka Local Government Area in Taraba State and Toungo Local Government Area in Adamawa State. The recent accident left 30 gold miners presumed dead in the Buffa zone of the Gashaka-Gumti National Park.
The organisation expressed deep concern over the incidences of illegal mine camps and even mine collapses across the country, stating that these challenges now cast doubt on the operational effectiveness of the Mines Surveillance Task Team as well as other monitoring outfits designed to regulate such occurrences. “Despite existing regulations, illegal mining continues to proliferate, revealing serious gaps in enforcement, often at the expense of local communities,” CAPPA said. “Our field investigations have uncovered illegal and abandoned mining camps operated by both local and foreign—often Chinese—interests in states like Nasarawa, Osun and Ekiti among others.
Artisanal miners, primarily impoverished locals and vulnerable groups such as women and chilren, risk their lives digging as deep as 200 feet with nothing but shovels and minimal safety measures and equipment. “This unregulated extraction not only facilitates the plunder of communal resources but also leads to severe environmental degradation, leaving behind hazardous open pits that endanger not only the miners but the broader community alike,” said Akinbode Oluwafemi, Executive Director of CAPPA. The organisation also flagged the pressing need to address the socioeconomic conditions that compel locals into unsafe mining practices, reflecting that poverty, created and sustained by systemic exclusion, forces many to engage in dangerous mining operations as a means of survival.
The organisation warned that, as global capital now drives a frenzy for minerals to support a “green transition,” mineral-rich communities in Nigeria will remain locked in cycles of exploitation and danger unless they are allowed a rightful stake in the wealth extracted from their lands. “Without structural changes that redistribute this economic power, illegal mining will continue as an imposed, desperate option for the impoverished. While we continue to sound the alarm about the dangers of illegal mining, we must also address the conditions that push individuals into these high-risk activities,” CAPPA stated.
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