By Gabriel Ewepu

ABUJA — Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dr Dele Alake, Friday disclosed that over 3,000 illegal gold miners have been flushed out. Speaking during a press briefing at the Ministry’s headquarters in Abuja, to mark one year of the Mining Marshals on safeguarding the solid minerals sector against illegal miners, Alake said the operations of the Mining Marshals were really impacting positively on the sector based on their achievements to sanitize the sector.

He said: “The corps of 2,220 officers that formed the pioneer Mining Marshals have increased by 450 to 2,670 due to the injections of new 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.

“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 one year. The cases are being prosecuted at various courts across the country. In many instances, the illegal miners had occupied the licensed areas for a decade and more, displacing the actual owners. The licencees were in jeopardy. To retain the licences, 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 where over 3,000 illegal miners were digging and carting away precious grams of gold whereas the real owners, who obtained the licence in 2016 were barred by threats from operations. The Mining Marshals flushed them out completely and stationed men on site to maintain law and order till date.

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