Former Labour leader and Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Interior, Senator Adams Oshiomhole, is not the first to tell Nigerians that our solid mineral fields have been hijacked by those he described as “retired Generals” in collaboration with foreign crooks.

Oshiomhole addressed the media recently and disclosed how, as National Chairman of his political party (the All Progressives Congress, APC), he sent a report of how some retired Generals and foreigners were stealing our mineral resources to former President Muhammadu Buhari. Nothing came of his effort.

In December 2023, the Minister of Solid Minerals, Dele Alake, who is a notable close confidant of President Bola Tinubu, had at a budget defence at the National Assembly, also raised the alarm on the deep involvement of “powerful Nigerians” in illegal mining and sponsorship of terrorism in different parts of the country. Alake claimed that government was “identifying them with both kinetic and non-kinetic means”. Till date, no one has been named, let alone brought to book.

That Oshiomhole would be alerting Nigerians to this same problem over 14 months after Alake’s media briefing simply shows that even Tinubu, like his predecessor, has been unwilling or unable to rise to the occasion as Commander-in-Chief. If two presidents could not tackle this problem with all the powers at their disposal, what do Oshiomhole and Alake expect the Nigerian public to do? Chase after the so-called retired Generals?

The dimension of discriminatory treatment of illegal miners in the North compared to illegal refinery operators in the Niger Delta, is another issue that people have complained about. The Federal Government is always very eager to deploy the Nigerian Army, Navy, Air Force, Police and Civil Defence Corps to destroy artisanal refineries in the creeks, while killing and arresting the operators. The same eagerness has not been deployed against illegal miners in the North where insecurity has become almost intractable for the past 16 years.

We call on our leaders to take decisive actions, and confront the evil forces that have reduced Nigeria to a laughingstock and abject state failure.

A situation where a handful of “big men” levy insecurity, terrorism and mindlessly plunder the resources of the nation unchecked by those empowered to do so, is totally unacceptable! When an anomaly like this prevails for so long, it is often the case that powerful people inside the machinery of government are also involved in the plunder.                            

We demand that the culprits be immediately named, shamed and prosecuted. We can’t be fighting small fry bandits while leaving their sponsors to roam free. Anyone who wants to invest in the mineral sector should follow the lawful process and obtain a licence.

Government must stop complaining and do its work!