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.
However, while the AERE Report may have helped in stressing the scope of the problem, and in confirming that crime is increasingly threatening the sector, the outcome of its investigation is not new. It is public knowledge that there is a strong nexus between banditry and illicit mining. Money drives the crime that has become almost as lucrative as drug trafficking. Most of the mining communities have become a thriving hub for sundry criminal cartels. This illicit trade now manifests in trafficking of firearms and explosives, smuggling and money laundering. The link between land, minerals and the escalating violence in many of the north central states has been established by the AERE Report.
Zamfara in the northwest is undoubtedly the headquarters of banditry in the country. The state has huge deposits of gold and other minerals. Unfortunately, instead of using the proceeds to finance development, these have become more of resource-curse. The illegal exploitation of gold has long been identified as the underlying cause of the state’s perpetual violence, kidnappings and killings. Illicit mining undermines fair access. There have been many reports indicting top military officers and traditional rulers as complicit in the violence. But nobody has ever been brough to justice.
Politicians, top government officials and many foreigners are also neck-deep in the crime, thus weakening state structures and making governments less accountable. According to UN Comtrade, about 97 tonnes of gold worth billions of dollars were smuggled out of the country between 2012 and 2018. The authorities were not unaware of the crime. Indeed, the federal government at a time declared a no-fly zone and banned all forms of mining in Zamfara to douse the violence in the area. It had little or no effect.
In drawing parallels with the Democratic Republic of Congo, the AERE Report is apt as Nigeria risks replicating a model in which armed groups seize control of mining areas, smuggle these minerals across borders while proceeds flow into private hands. After decades of bloodshed and massacres in the country, driven largely by mineral wealth, President Felix Tshisekedi at the 60th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, pressed the international community to help confront the mass atrocities taking place in the DRC. But Nigeria cannot afford to be another Congo.
Although the Tinubu administration has revoked some dormant mineral licenses and deployed mining marshals to help secure mining sites and dismantle illegal operations, government must do more by identifying and prosecuting profiteers from insecurity around the country’s mines.