My community has lost over $200m to illegal mining - Alatorin of Atorin

Oba Robertson Omololu Ibitoye Afilaka, the Alatorin of Atorin a systems engineer, and traditional ruler of Atorin Kingdom, in this interview with Ruth Tene Natsa shares their challenges as the activities of illegal miners threatens the existence of some of the communities in his kingdom….Excerpts

Share with us the mining activities happening in Atorin.

Atorin has been blessed with gold forever, we never knew. I only got to know a year into my reign. At the time, we witnessed an influx of artisanal miners coming in from the northern part of the country. That was not strange to us, because we had always lived together with the Fulanis rearing their cows; we didn’t have any problem with that. Though they were very destructive, destroying cash crops like cocoa, colanuts, and palm trees, we resolved it amongst the artisanal miners and farmers of Atorin. Then all of a sudden, I realised there was an influx of excavators. I am talking about tens of excavators. At one point, we counted about 16 excavators on our land. I then wrote to the Nigeria Mining Cadastre Office (NMCO), the mining officer in Osogbo, the Mineral Resources and Environmental Management Committee (MIREMCO), the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA), and the governor, but there were no replies from anybody. Until I paid a personal visit to the former minister of Solid Minerals, Architect Olamilekan Adegbite, who swung into action and gave a ‘Stop Work Order’, It was a huge environmental disaster and destruction of our water bodies. They were mining for Alluvia gold. They found rich deposits, destroyed our farms, and paid our people peanuts. I am the potentate of 21 villages and can tell you that the activities of the miners were breeding poverty for landowners. They have polluted the streams of six villages mining for alluvial gold. And now the owners of the land don’t even have their cocoa and their kola nuts and their palm trees anymore.

“If people are going to lose their livelihoods from farming, the government must work out alternative sources of income.”

Are you saying the miners that came in with these excavators are illegal?

The miner that came had licensed illegal mining, I call it. Yes, licensed because he had a license, but I call it illegal because before you get a license, you’re meant to have the consent of the people and the traditional ruler; I never give consent. The Kabiyesi I succeeded, His Royal Majesty, Olufisayo Ogidingbe, who reigned between 1972 and 2018, was a brilliant lawyer and farmer and was averse to mining, so I know he never gave consent. They were illegal in such a way that before you commence mining, from my little study of the mining Act 2007, you must have what they call a community development agreement (CDA). Where is the CDA? Where is the consent? Who signed it? We do not have any of those things, so in the absence of all these documents, anything they do is illegal. You can’t just brandish a paper called a mining lease, exploration license, or a small-scale mining lease; it doesn’t confer you the rights of legally doing what you call mining or engaging in mining. What confers on you the legality to mine in Nigeria is all contained in the Mining Act 2007, which is a very robust law that, if properly enforced, will take care of the communal needs of the people, the government, as well as the miner.

Now, you just described the current mining act as one that is robust; if so, why are some people calling for its repeal?

No matter how good a law is, it can be subjected to amendments to make it a better law for the people. We don’t want to go down the way oil communities in the Niger Delta suffered; it will mean we have not learnt from our mistakes. How come you are taking billions of dollars from a community, and they don’t even have a pipe for water? They’re living on the sea, and they’re thirsty because the water has been polluted. They’re producing so much energy in the form of gas, and you can just install gas turbines for them to have electricity? Ijaw, Bayelsa, Rivers, etc. They are the geese laying the golden eggs, and unfortunately, they’re forgotten. So, I don’t want that to happen to our people. And I think that’s what the likes of the right honourable chairman of the House Committee on Solid Mineral, Hon. Jonathan Gaza, are doing. As a young man, he’s doing exceptionally well. He’s taking the love of his community and his people straight to the National Assembly. I think he should be celebrated. He is asking for just 5 percent of what’s being taken out of our soils to be given to the community development association within that community to develop their communities.

I would give you an example with my community. We don’t have pipes for water; we don’t even have access roads. I have 21 villages that are tough to access. These people work all year round, but when it is time to bring in their harvests, there are no roads for them to bring them to the markets. I learnt before I became the Oba that this road had been awarded a few times; it’s a federal road that stretches over 50 kilometres that goes through my villages, yet they have done less than two kilometres in the last 20 years. They did that just last year, and what has been done is almost washed off, and this is an arterial road, because my property straddles the border of Osun, Ijesha land, and Ondo state. We are a border town, so if that road is fixed, it’s going to be the shortest distance to Ondo state, and it will give my people access to education, because there are three universities in Ondo state. And the fourth one is Osun State University, Ifetedo campus. Which is less than 20 kilometres to my village, if there was a road.

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So now, again, the federal government is looking at transitioning from an oil and gas economy to the solid minerals sector. How does this bother you as a leader of your community?

My worries are many. I again celebrate Dr. Dele Alake, the minister of Solid Minerals Development, for putting Solid Minerals on the map. Though past ministers of the sector have equally done well. There was Dr. Kayode Fayemi; there was also the immediate past minister, Olamilekan Adegbite, who pushed that beneficiation be part of the Mining Act, which is going to save us and also make us a lot of money. My biggest fear, however, is when you want to tap into all these natural resources and forget about building the human capacity in these villages. If people are going to lose their livelihoods from farming, the government must work out alternative sources of income. Now, it begs the question, who’s going to be responsible for the training and the retraining? The retraining and the retooling of our people is very crucial. Otherwise, instead of mining creating wealth, it is a retool of creating more poverty. And you see, whether you like it or not, in the rural areas, our needs are just not so much. We just need the basics, you, the city dwellers; what you take for granted is what we pray for. All I want in my community is just electricity and pipe-borne water. I have access to food already. In my garden, I have almost all the vegetables I need. I rear my snails. Now I’m trying to go into wearing grass cutters. I’m rearing goats. We can survive. Food is the least of our problems. We even want to sell the leftovers of our food to the market, but there are no roads for us to link the market. Now, you find out when the Chinese came into my community, they even came with their top drivers and excavator operators; they never taught my people how to operate the equipment such as the bulldozers, dumpers, etc. I am saying these people don’t really care about us. All they’re interested in is our God-given assets and will do anything to get them. And this is also the cause of insecurity in the rural areas. These problems you’ve seen rearing up in Nigeria are a function of mining. People are causing problems to destabilise the people; the people run away from their land, and you see people start mining them.

Now, you talked about people coming into your community with excavators; has there been remediation of any sort?

After the mining activities, we now have something that looks like black soil, land that used to be very productive. After the extensive mining and digging and whatever, we now have like sandy lands dotting a few areas. It looks like a beach, but with stones, big stones, so there was no reclamation and no remediation. I complained to the MIREMCO; they did something, but when I complained it wasn’t well done, they walked away.

What has been done by the government, whether at the state level, at the federal government level, or even by the community itself, to remediate that environment, to restore it? And what has happened to the people of those communities? Have they been displaced or are they still managing within the environment?

The people were dispossessed of their land and paid peanuts, so they were complicit. We were kind of complicit.

How much do you think your community has lost as a result of the infiltration of artisanal illegal or supposed legal minors?

I put it at $200 million at the barest minimum. And I didn’t get a dime, because I saw what they were doing as destructive, and I didn’t want that, so no Chinese man on earth can tell me that he gave me a dime. Yeah, I was offered money, but I turned it down.

How much were you offered?

Well, someone offered me N20 million, and another offered me N25 million. And I said, Look, if you want to offer me money, make it $20 million, because with that I will turn my village into the best village Africa has ever seen. I’ll have a golf course, new schools, roads, and one of the best hospitals in Nigeria, but with 20 million in Nigeria, I can only buy myself a Hilux.