By Gabriel Ewepu

As Mining Marshals for the mining sector clocked one year after their official inauguration, the Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dr Dele Alake, disclosed on Friday that over 3,000 illegal gold miners had been flushed out.

Speaking during a press briefing at the Ministry’s headquarters in Abuja to mark one year of the Mining Marshals safeguarding the solid minerals sector against illegal miners, Alake said the Mining Marshals’ operations are really impacting the sector positively based on their achievements to sanitize the sector.

According to him, in the first year, the Mining Marshals held direct engagements across 10 states of Niger, Kogi, Nasarawa, Akwa Ibom, Ondo, Kaduna, Enugu, Abia, Kwara and the Federal Capital Territory, while in 2025, their operations shall be strengthened all over the country to straighten the sector and protect the nation’s solid minerals.

He said: “The corps of 2,220 officers that formed the pioneer Mining Marshals have increased by 450 to 2,670 today due to the injections of recruits of 350 and 100 officers during the year.

“No doubt, the activation of a new corps to enforce the provisions of the Nigerian Mining and Minerals Law, 2007, and the regulations sent shivers down the spine of illegal miners. They realised that it would no longer be business as usual.

“Yet, crafting an intervention force required distinct combat orientation, offensive and defensive strategy.

“The Mining Marshals were going to deal with a new set of enemies: illegal miners that occupy areas with rich mineral deposits, loot the mineral wealth of the country and cart them away for sale.

“Like locusts, they invade areas licensed to companies and make it impossible for the legal owners to have access to their sites. Against the law that forbids mining in forest reserves, national parks, schools and built-up areas, these saboteurs not only defy the law by their operations in restricted areas, they deploy weapons against law enforcement officers. It is on record that the National Parks Service lost officers at the Oyo National Park in their efforts to checkmate illegal miners.

“The gravity of illegal mining worsened with the emergence of companies that collaborate with individual miners to perpetrate this evil. While individual illegal miners are unable to excavate deeply due to the limitations of modern equipment and finance, corporate collaborators encourage deeper excavation and scale up the criminality.

“To demonstrate that there has been a clear paradigm shift in the strategy for containing illegal mining, the Mining Marshals have arrested 327 persons in the last year. The cases are being prosecuted at various courts across the country.

“As soon as we activated the Mining Marshals, my phones were bombarded by directors of duly licensed companies who could not gain access to their sites because illegal miners had taken over the lawfully given cadastral units.

“In many instances, the illegal miners had occupied the licensed areas for a decade and more, displacing the actual owners.

The licenses were in jeopardy. To retain them, they had to pay the annual service fee for a site they could not access. Also, they could not implement their work plans.

“Therefore, I directed the Mining Marshals to move to such sites, flush the illegal miners and restore the sites to the legitimate owners.

“The first clearance operation took place at Mining Lease 19325 of North-South Extractive Industries Limited, located in Jagula, off Isanlu in Yagba East Local Government Area of Kogi State. Over 3,000 illegal miners were digging and carting away precious grams of gold, whereas threats barred the real owners, who obtained the license in 2016, from operations.

“The Mining Marshals flushed them out completely and stationed men on site to maintain law and order till date.

“Since then, the MM has recorded similar success stories by restoring the sites of Ganan Mining Limited (ML 56757 covering 72 cadastral units or 14,4 kilometres) in Kuje, Federal Capital Territory; Jinloys Nigeria Limited with Quarry Lease 22284 in Uru Lopaukwu Autonomous Community, Umunneochi Local Government Area of Abia State; and Orbit Exploration and Natural Products Limited with Mining Lease 772 covering 208 cadastral units or 41.6 square kilometres in Ankpa Local Government Area, Kogi State.

“According to our records, MM has recovered over 98 sites in the last one year. This has enabled many license owners to return to the site and resume operations. This will, ultimately, improve royalties and raise the contribution of solid minerals to the country’s revenue.

So far, the MM has identified 457 suspected illegal mining sites and has improved intelligence gathering on these sites.”

Meanwhile, earlier, when addressing the Mining Marshals, the Minister applauded their doggedness, patriotism, bravery and achievements in their specialized duty for the past year.

He disclosed that President Bola Tinubu was highly impressed with the achievements recorded by the Mining Marshals. The Minister assured the Marshals that they would receive serious support to meet whatever challenges they encountered during the course of carrying out operations. He also added that their scope of operations and area would be expanded across the country, including Zamfara State, where the mining ban was recently lifted.

However, the Minister said the non-kinetic approach would be scaled up with programs to improve bonding between the government and artisanal miners and to increase the registration of co-operatives, which currently stands at about 300.

Meanwhile, Assistant Commandant John Attah, Mining Marshals, who also serves as the head, assures that they will sustain the tempo of their operations and promises not to let the country, President and Minister down.

Attah, reeling out their achievements and challenges within the one year of their operations, maintained that they never lost any personnel and added that the Minister has been very supportive.

Also, the Director General Nigeria Mining Cadastre Office, Obadiah Nkom, in his remarks, commended the efforts of the Mining Marshals to chase out illegal miners and recover about 100 mining sites officially allocated to genuine investors who own the mining sites and tasked the Mining Marshals to step up their operations as more responsibilities would be given to them and expressed optimism that they would continue to succeed amid daunting challenges from the criminals.