Many have wondered how North-west Nigeria’s avalanche of bandits, now classified as terrorists, came about, especially how they got the humongous amount of money they use in procuring dangerous arms and ammunition.
Many Nigerians may have concluded, albeit erroneously, that money made from kidnap for ransom, cattle rustling or other criminal activities has been the sole source of funding of banditry. But, whereas money from kidnap for ransom and cattle rustling may have lined the purse of bandits in recent years, investigation has shown that banditry became lucrative through the activities of gold prospectors. On many instances, gold prospectors employ the services of youths and arm them to scare rival prospectors from the juicy gold mines or deploy them as vanguards to defend their mining interests.
Before bandits came under organised prospectors, however, gold mining sites were controlled by steely-eyed, heavily armed rogues who command them with martial law – like uncompromising dictates. Mining, mostly done by peasants, artisanal scavengers, was heavily taxed by non-state actors. And as more and more young men discovered that those with guns tend to get the lion’s share of gold, they also opted to arm themselves, thereby making the jungles more dangerous. And with danger now lurking everywhere, most artisanal gold scavengers had to abandon the bushes as they were being murdered and their gold loads carted away by bandits.
To survive, the artisanal miners resorted to going to the rich mines during the day with tippers to collect loads of sand with the protection of armed bandits. These loads are then washed in homes around Malele, Dansadau, Bukuyum, among other communities in Zamfara state. These are places where many prospectors, nay bandit commanders and their sponsors, had sunk boreholes for this purpose. Needless to say, they also had all the workshops, complete with every chemical needed to refine the gold.
During the 2020 Nigerian Mining Week, Nigeria’s Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Arc. Olamilekan Adegbite, disclosed that “Artisanal miners who need money to take care of their families are selling to bandits, who are buying from them very cheaply, and they will now go and resell for higher profits across the borders. What they do is that they exchange gold for guns, bullets and other weapons”.
Perhaps, what he failed to mention was that these bandits and their sponsors were, in fact, the ones sponsoring the entire gig, from the tippers, to the digging and the eventual processing. Therefore, the miners, who had been reduced to labourers for hire, had little or no choice than to sell, or, more correctly, get paid for their mining services.
But why did the federal government allow this illegal activity to fester? You will have to go back to 2010, when, in a bid to forestall illegal mining which even at that time has left a trail of corpses in its wake, the federal government, in collaboration with Zamfara state government, moved to establish firm control of mining activities by floating the “Zamfara Minerals Processing Factory, near Gusau, the Zamfara state capital.
But construction was halted in late 2010 after an outbreak of lead poisoning (which was attributed to the processing of lead-rich gold ore) in Anka and Bukkuym local government areas, about 80 kilometres west of Gusau and 130 kilometres east of Gusau, respectively. In 2011, the site of the former Mafara Brick Factory was proposed as the new site for the Zamfara Minerals Processing Factory. Brightway Minerals & Mining Limited proposed to build a 400-metric-ton-per-day-capacity copper smelter at the new Zamfara Minerals Processing Factory (Abubakar, 2011) as cited in USGS 2011 Minerals Year Book.
Australian Mines Limited of Australia continued with its acquisition of Nigeria Gold Proprietary Limited and its exploration of the Kagara, Kasele, and Yargama gold prospects. The joint venture of Erin Mineral Resources, which was a subsidiary of Erin Resources Proprietary Limited of Australia and Nafoka Resources Limited, was exploring the Malele-Gobirawa project. The joint venture of Erin and Sasco Limited of Nigeria was prospecting on the Bukuyum-Dogondaji and the Mahuta gold projects. In December, the joint venture of Segilola Gold Limited, which was a subsidiary of Ratel Group Limited of the British Virgin Islands, and Tropical Mines Limited of Nigeria, completed a 36-hole 3,704-meter drill programme on the Segilola gold project (Ratel Group Ltd., 2012, p. 3). cited in USGS 2011 Minerals Year Book.
Strangely, it was around this time that operations of bandits and Yan Bindiga terrorists began their speedy climb to notoriety. It gets even more interesting because, Nakofa Resource Limited, Global Gems Ltd and Ohio Global Ltd which covered gold exploration activities in Malele, Dansadau to Bukuyum in Zamfara state; Mahuta in Kebbi state and Kagara in Niger state including other areas in Sokoto state, and is alleged to have completed the wholesale acquisition of all the gold in the area, belongs to a very powerful and decorated ex-Nigerian Army general alleged to control over 70% of gold mining in Zamfara state.
The question begging for answers then is, is it possible that the so-called mining companies are fronts simply working with bandits to intimidate artisanal miners into slaving for them and other bandit overlords in their employ? The answer may be found in a certain arrest of some Chinese in April 2020 by the Nigeria Police Anti-illegal Mining Squad. According to the police, “On 25th April, 2020, information had it that Chinese and Bulkinabe nationals were taking shelter somewhere in Nasarawa Burkullu. And on 26th April, 2020, the commissioner of police led another team to the same village where two Chinese nationals were seen with all the chemicals necessary for making gold.”
Well, it has now emerged that the arrested Chinese nationals as well as many others arrested for defying the federal government’s ban on gold mining were bailed by Mardi Aliyu, the erstwhile deputy governor of the Zamfara state. According to a recent press release by the APC, Mr. Mahdi, the son of a very influential retired Army general may be hand in glove with the bandits in Zamfara state. Nobody can tell how much of what the APC claimed is politics or fact. One thing though is clear, if indeed Mahdi Aliyu puts himself on the line to bail Chinese illegal miners while still in office as a deputy governor, then certain conclusions could be spot on.
Another question that remains unanswered, is, of course, how bandits diversified into the more nefarious activities of kidnapping and wholesome taxation of villages. The answer may just lie in the shrinking gold mining space that is alleged to have been suffocated by companies owned and run by this powerful ex-general of Zamfara politics.
This makes a lot of sense if one considers what Nigeria’s minister of Mines and Steel Development said about bandits exchanging gold for dangerous weapons. With more and more bandits now cradling dangerous guns and the mining sites expectedly becoming too dangerous for miners or, more correctly, with no miners to till the land for them, this coupled with the reality of swathes of ungoverned spaces, human beings became easy targets in their desperation for new sources of income, hence, the rise and rise of kidnapping for ransom and illegal taxation.
Without sweating it, it is either the strong man of Zamfara politic’s mining interests in the specific areas where banditry has been thriving for close to a decade somehow just coincided with the escalation of bloody carnage by non-state actors, or he probably knows something about the operations of this rogue militia. It becomes overly shocking that the man and his known associates have never even been hauled in for as little as a questioning. Is Nigeria selling to the world the disturbing notion that marauding outlaws can be above the law?
Abubakar writes from Abuja.
