Government should identify and prosecute profiteers of insecurity around the mines
An investigative report, ‘The Shadow Owners,’ published by the Alliance for Economic Research and Ethics Limited (AERE) has alleged that the country’s worsening insecurity in several mineral-rich states is being driven by powerful economic interests seeking control of the country’s vast solid mineral deposits. The report challenged the long-held narratives that ethnic divisions, religious extremism, herder-farmer’s clashes over open grazing are sole reasons for conflicts, arguing that such explanations obscure a much larger bloody enterprise built around resource exploitation. Indeed, the report stated that terror is being used as an effective tool for sacking communities from resource-rich lands.
Chaired by former Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA) president, Dele Oye, the AERE Report noted that persistent violence and rural banditry across Zamfara, Kaduna, Plateau, Niger, Nasarawa and Benue States follows the same geographical pattern as the country’s richest deposits of gold, lithium and uranium, contending that the conflict is more or less driven by powerful economic interests. The bandits are merely “expendable foot soldiers”, as the real beneficiaries conceal their identities through offshore shell companies. Besides the devastating conflicts and deteriorating insecurity enabling mass dislocation, Illegal mining comes at a huge cost to the nation, estimated at $9 billion annually.
