Illegal gold miners from the North return to Edo, as fear grips community

THE rustic village of Dangbala in Akoko Edo Local Government Area of Edo State is in the news again for the wrong reasons. The once peaceful pastoral community lost its quiet to the orgy of violence that hit it in March 2020, when some illegal miners of gold invaded the community.

As is their trademark wherever they operate, the illegal miners visited wanton violence on the peasants in the community, leaving a trail of blood in their tracks. The activities of the illegal miners have since exposed the community to a siege of criminality such that the state government, in April 2020, stopped all mining activities in the community.

But like a hydra, when the villagers were on the verge of heaving a sigh of relief, the illegal miners sneaked back into the community in a more vicious manner, visiting hardship and bloodletting on the hapless inhabitants.

The first sign that the criminal miners had returned to the community was in early December 2021, when one of the villagers, Peter Adelabu Kokumo, was attacked and inflicted with machete cuts in his head at one of the illegal mini sites located at the Oketegbe area of the community.

Kokumo, alongside other villagers, had made a bold move to resist the illegal miners’ return to the community but the well armed miners, beyond attacking the villagers, went ahead to burn their motor cycles.

That incident worsened the security challenges in the community as the illegal miners and other criminal elements invaded the community with kidnapping, banditry, robbery and rape of women becoming commonplace.

The situation led to the formation of the Akoko Edo Security Network headed by Mr Victor Onofa Aseriabo and Aimanerimi Arogunyo.

Many residents are wont to blame the upsurge in crime and criminality in Dagbala and its environs on the backing allegedly given to the illegal miners, who now operate in the area in their hundreds, by officials of the Benin Zonal Mining Office and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) against genuine, licensed miners who, alongside the villagers, watch helplessly as the illegal miners have a field day rendering the land prostrate.

The villagers and watchers of events in the locality have also argued that in situations where the officials of the zonal mining office and the security agency intervened, such interventions were feeble and ineffectual. The situation had got to a level where the locals had to organise vigilance groups to oversee the security of the locality.

Almost on a daily basis, kidnapping and robbery take place on the Okpameri-Lampese Road, just as any trip from the area to the neighbouring community of Ogori Mangogo in Kogi State, is a high risk.

Instances of the deteriorating security situation in the area include an attack on a Catholic priest from Lampese, Reverend Father Aloysious Oregbeme, who escaped with the windscreen of his car broken and the abduction of a woman from Osos alongside her driver on her way from the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. Her children were spared and asked to go and inform the family.

In the course of a search by the personnel of the Akoko Edo Security Network, a hunter identified simply as Omojola, who hails from Ojah, was on December 21, 2021, discovered in a pool of his blood, having been attacked by bandits suspected to be Fulani herdsmen and left to die in the bush. Omojola’s attack followed the December 20, 2021 blockade of the Dangbala-Ojirami Road at about 9.00 p.m. for over one hour, forcing motorists to park by Erhunrun Junction.

Dangbala’s march to violence was not just a happenstance. It followed the discovery of a large deposit of gold by a mining company, Macana Company Limited, in March 2021. The company had got a licence for the exploration of limestone in the locality. In the course of an excavation work, it stumbled on the gold deposit. Having approached the necessary government agencies and hanged its exploration licence, the company began to explore for gold and that attracted the illegal miners who promptly swarmed the field. The licensed miners were then forced to abandon the sites and the community.

The Managing Director of the mining company, Mr Fatai Jimoh, said the firm had written several petitions to the relevant agencies on the activities of the illegal miners but nothing had been done.

Apparently emboldened by the lack of action from the Benin Zonal Mining Office and the security agencies, the illegal miners returned to Dangbala in December 2021 and became more brazen in their illegal operations. The Oketegbe mining site in Dangbala is now a theater of war.

The security challenge the illegal mining activities have created in the once peaceful community is now telling on the residents who said that they now sleep with one eye closed.

The residents, under the aegis of Concerned Residents of Dangbala, in a statement endorsed by Godwin Amusa and Agbaje Saiki, the convener and secretary respectively, noted that it had become imperative to go public on the issue in order to avoid the Zamfara State situation in the purely agrarian community.

They said not only has the competition among the invading illegal miners created tension in the community, but their activities have become a security threat to the people of the area.

Aside from the security threat to the area and by extension the state, the villagers said both the state and the federal governments were losing a lot of revenue to the illegal mining activities.

“The once peaceful community has been turned into something we fear may snowball into what will become a problem to the community and state as a whole. These people move in with their equipment at ungodly hours and carry on with their activities with impunity. With the way they go about these activities, one is forced to believe that they have outside forces backing them.

“The leadership of the community is divided on the matter. While some pretend not to know what is happening, others who are speaking against it are being forced to shut up. The security threat is the reason why a few of us came together and decided to come out publicly to call for an urgent action by the authorities to stop this madness,” the group said.

The group came up with another statement saying that the delay by the Federal Government and other relevant stakeholders in allowing legitimate license holders commence mining at Dangbala site was responsible for the fragile security in the community.

It demanded the prosecution of those arrested and found to have been involved in the criminal exploitation of the community’s natural resources.

“We want the government to allow those that have licence and have been duly cleared to be allowed to take over their respective spaces in the Oketegbe mining site. Once they are allowed to go back and occupy their space, it will check the insecurity and ward off unscrupulous people from having a field day like they did when nothing was happening there.

“We are concerned by the fact that activities of illegal miners have heightened insecurity in the area and this has instilled fear in our people. Our fear is further compounded by the claim that there is nothing like illegal mining here even in the face of attacks on some of our people by the illegal miners.

“We do not know who to trust again because a security agency that is saddled with the responsibility has come out to deny what we know to be happening,” the group added.

But reacting to the allegation that the personnel of the NSCDC were aiding the activities of the illegal gold miners in Dangbala, the spokesman of the NSCDC in the Edo State, Mr Efosa Ugbebor, denied that such a thing was happening. He maintained that the place was being guarded by the agency’s officers since its closure in 2021.

“It is not true that our officers are providing cover for illegal miners in Dangbala. In fact, there is no mining activity in that area as we speak,” Ugbebor stated.

However, weeks later, the NSCDC reportedly confirmed the arrest of four illegal gold miners.

The state commandant of the agency, Udoeyop, stated that the suspects, who hailed from Kogi, Kebbi, Taraba and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, were arrested in December 2021. He said the suspects were caught by NSCDC operatives in conjunction with local vigilance groups at Damgbala community.

The NSCDC’s spokesman’s position, however, tallied with that of the Zonal Mining Officer, ZMO, Abdulkadiri Adamu, who said that he was not aware of the return of illegal miners to the area since it was shut down by the Edo State government.

According to him, “the Edo State government placed embargo on the activities of miners in the area and I am not aware that they (the miners) are back there.”

But the spokesman of the community, Collins Nicholas, maintained that Dangbala was on the edge and called for the prosecution of those arrested in connection with illegal mining in the community.

“Presently, illegal mining thrives in my community day and night. Those that are benefiting have boasted that they are untouchable. Even when local security (vigilante) came, they prevented them from gaining access to the site. Secondly, they are using the name of our traditional head to write petitions against those opposed to them in Dangbala,” Nicholas said.

The Special Adviser to Governor Godwin Obaseki on Security Matters, Haruna Yusuf, when contacted, also confirmed the arrest of four miners and noted that the matter was being handled by the state police command in Benin.

(Nigerian Tribune)