Jos—Alhaji Sani Shehu, National President, Miners’ Association of Nigeria, MAN, has said the nation loses billions of naira annually to illegal miners who do not pay taxes and royalties.

Shehu said yesterday in Jos that genuine owners of mining titles were also losing money to the illegal miners who carry out illegal mining on titles when the owners were not around.

He said: “These illegal miners mine on titles that do not belong to them, either in the night or whenever they will not be seen by the owners of such titles.

“They then take the materials to illegal buying points scattered all over the country and sell at attractive prices; that serves as an incentives since they know that the trade  is very attractive.”

Shehu said these illegal mine centres bought the mines from the illegal miners at very attractive prices because they did not pay anything to government as royalty.

He said such chain of illegal engagements right from the illegal miners to illegal mine centres were frustrating the development of the country’s solid minerals sub-sector.

The president decried the indiscriminate opening of illegal mining centres which competed heavily with legal title owners, and blamed it for the high incident of illegal mining in the country.

“People open shops and start buying minerals at very high prices from illegal miners; the incentives the illegal miners got by way of patronage from the illegal buying centres serve as incentives to them.”

Shehu urged the Federal Government to take urgent and drastic actions against the menace, warning that until that was done, “the activities of illegal miners with its attendant consequences will seem to have come to stay in Nigeria.”