Osun State, Nigeria – Ragged and his skin-stained brown, Abu Awwalu emerged with a shovel and axe and climbed over clods of earth that have mounted after weeks of pitting. It was twilight and Mr Awwalu had been digging since morning and creating hollow mine shafts in search of gold in this jungle near Idoko Ijesha, Obokun Local Government Area.
Fortunate to hit gold, Mr Awwalu went to the Opo River meandering through Ijeshaland to wash the raw mineral. He not only blocked the natural flow of the water, but he was also polluting the water. Having no knowledge of responsible mining, he left the tailings – the residue after washing the raw mineral – and the wastewater untreated and let them flow into the waterway.
Mr Awwalu said he is one of the thousands of economic migrants forming a brimming presence in otherwise slumbering Ijesha gold-rich communities like Idoko, Ibala, Itagunmodi, Iponda, Araromi, and urban neighbourhoods in Ilesha, the Ijesha heartland.
Mr Awwalu and others had moved southwards, in droves, following the unrelenting violence of terrorist outlaws and the military countermeasures in Zamfara State, northwestern Nigeria. The Zamfara conflict as well as the ban on gold mining, once theorised as fueling banditry, in the state had forced open a search for new sites.
Ijesha area of Osun State in the South-west then became a new destination. Though long known to have vast gold deposits and some mining minimally happening, residents said “it was only recently” that mining activities became intense and widespread, happening both in urban areas – for example, Arimoro and Isale General areas of Ilesha – and rural communities across Obokun, Atakunmosa East, Atakunmosa West, and Oriade local governments.
“These (rural) areas have practically been taken over by illegal miners,” Tony Adejuwon said. His not-for-profit Urban Alert has advocated responsible mining and protection of the environment and water resources in Osun State.
Abu Awwalu, economic migrant, poses after occluding Opo river, Osun tributary to wash the gold he had illegally mined. With no knowledge of responsible mining they leave tailings and wastewater untreated and to flow into the waterways, causing contamination. Credit: Taiwo Adebayo/PT.
“A lot of them, about 20 thousand, came from Zamfara en masse,” said the Deputy Chief of Staff to Governor Gboyega Oyetola, Adeyanju Binuyo, who oversees mining activities in the state. Mr Binuyo corroborated local narratives that the widespread mining activities, commonly illegal and unregulated, in the Ijesha area as well as Ile-Ife started recently, following the crisis in Zamfara.
The economic migrants like Mr Awwalu – who Mr Binuyo described as ‘scavengers’ – are mostly labourers. They use crude tools for extraction, in a chain of artisanal mining that is almost always unlicensed. They either work for someone who has invested in acquiring access to a mining site from local landlords or work independently to extract raw gold for off-takers or middlemen.
Idoko Ijesha, a disturbed ground left unrestored by miners after they ended their operations. It pollutes Opo river, a tributary of River Osun, and is useless for farming. Credit: Taiwo Adebayo/PT.
“Usually, a miner will buy the land having gold from the community and bring the Hausa to work on it but sometimes some of them also enter the jungle to mine for themselves and sell to the miners or gold traders after weighing the gold,” said Alaba Aluko, an Ilesha resident with the local knowledge of the mining activities in the area.
And even where miners claim they are licensed by the government, like the Arimoro, Ilesha small scale and artisanal site of Biggie (as the miner wants to be identified) or the industrial-scale sites using heavy pieces of machinery in Iponda or Isale General, there is rarely any demonstration of responsibility for the environment and the society. This is in contravention of Nigeria’s 2007 mining law and 2011 reg
The Ilesha gold belt is worth about five billion dollars, according to research by a professor, Olugbenga Okunlola, who is the president of the Geological Society of Africa. However, except for profiteering miners, rent-seeking community leaders, and compromised government officials, who fail to enforce regulatory standards, the search for gold is increasingly leaving devastating impacts.
“At the end of the day, what benefits accrue to the people from mining?” Femi ‘Fad’ Fadurotimi, a farmer and pastor, queried rather rhetorically, as he watched an excavator in action, dumping mining wastes into the Opo River waterway near his farm in Iponda.
“This (mining) is of no benefit to the state in any way,” said Mr Binuyo. “It ends up polluting the land, it ends up degrading the land. It affects farming. Mining is a very transient activity. After some time it winds up and makes the land impossible to farm on.”
Against the requirement of Nigeria’s 2011 mining regulations for reclamation and restoration of mine land and safe disposal of wastes, in the mining communities visited, mounts of clods fencing pits and ponds of contaminated water dot the landscape
Clods fencing an abandoned pit, filled with contaminated water in Idoko. Water course is blocked, cutting access to surrounding farms The law requires restoration of such land. Credit: Taiwo Adebayo/PT.
This offers a visual indication of the devastation mining is causing in the area, particularly to the water resource and by extension farming, livelihoods, and cultural assets like River Osun.
