Expert Advises Dele Alake On How To Deal With Artisan Miners In Nigeria

President Bola Tinubu has inaugurated his newly appointed ministers, assigning the position of Minister of Solid Minerals Development to his long-time associate, Dele Alake.

Alake is a journalist by profession, who served as the Commissioner for Information of Lagos State when President Tinubu was governor of the state. He also served as the communications adviser to Chief MKO Abiola when he ran for the 1999 presidential elections, as well as for President Muhammadu Buhari.

As someone who is relatively new to the solid minerals sector, he has been advised on how to deal with what is perhaps the biggest problem faced by the solid minerals sector in Nigeria– artisanal miners.

THE WHISTLER spoke to a former director in the Ministry of Solid Minerals in Kaduna, Stephen Joseph, who stated that the best way to handle the problem of artisanal miners is to collaborate closely with the state and local governments as they are the groups most immediately affected by the miners’ activities.

He also suggested that artisanal miners should be clustered, trained, and given proper equipment and licenses, something he said is not being done in the country.

“The issue arises when you don’t cluster them, give them the required training, and supply them with the necessary implements so they can carry out legal mining practices. Doing all these will allow them to acquire licenses or mineral titles as the case may be, but that is seldom done in Nigeria.

“I think the major issue in the sector is the fact that it is on the exclusive list but notwithstanding, the federal government is supposed to be collaborating closely with the states, because by and large, the state government is the immediate victim of the activities of these illegal miners, bearing in mind that the states don’t have the capacity to be going around all the mines.

“For instance, in the Kaduna mines inspectorate division now, I think as of last year they had only one functional Hilux to cover a lot of states. It’s not possible, there are a lot of mining activities happening in many places,” he said.

He stated that collaborating with the states would enable them to get firsthand information from them, but failing to do so would make it difficult to control.

“So, if they work closely with the states and the local governments by extension, they will be able to overcome all these things. They would be getting firsthand information from them, which will establish close links so they can get feedback mechanisms from them. However, if they don’t do this, they will be working in silos which is very difficult to control. That is the major problem, collaboration should be the main thing, and there should be synergy.

“That is the only way they will be able to curb such excesses, otherwise, I’m sorry, it will be very difficult to curb the activities of artisanal miners. In fact, that is one of the reasons they changed the name because they saw how difficult it was to curb it. They used to call them illegal miners but now they call them artisanal miners. It was a kind of defeatist approach to illegal mining because what they are doing is actually illegal,” he said.

Given Alake’s profession and background in journalism and communication, there are some who are skeptical of his ability to perform in his new role.

Joseph, who is a geologist, has said that his background in journalism and communication won’t affect him negatively in his new position because what he really needs as a leader is the mobilization of manpower.

“I don’t think so, I think in leadership what one really requires is the mobilization of manpower and I know they have the manpower in that industry, they have people that can give him advice, and they also have a lot of policies on ground that can guide him,” he said.