Abdulkadir Badsha Mukhtar published in Weekly Trust Saturday, 28
July 2012 05:00
Despite the danger posed by
lead poisoning to the people of Zamfara State, due to the activities of
informal miners, stakeholders say both the federal and state governments are
not responding appropriately to the disaster
In
2010, officials of the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) on their annual polio
vaccination visit to some rural communities in Zamfara State ended up
discovering the presence of lead poisoning. It was later established that the
pandemic was caused by the unregulated activities of unskilled miners, working
to extract gold by pulverising rocks.
The affected communities
are Bagega, Abare, Dareta, Duza, Sunke, Tungar Daji, Tungar Guru, and
Yargalma, mostly in Anka and Bugundu local government areas.
According to the Zamfara
State Ministry of Health, over 450 children had died from the lead
poisoning which broke out in the state, while MSF said “More than
2,000 are being treated for acute lead poisoning. Some of the children treated
had been infected again. The exact number of adults affected has not been
ascertained, however, it has led to higher rates of miscarriages among female
adults.”
At the peak of the poisoning,
79 children died within three weeks in Dareta alone.
In the beginning
According to local residents
interviewed by MSF, artisanal mining in Zamfara State dates back to 20 years
since the discovery of gold deposits near Dareta in Anka Local Government Area.
The opportunities later attracted people from neighboring states of Niger,
Katsina, Sokoto and even neighboring Niger Republic.
Indigenes of these
communities claim, however, that there were no known incidents of lead
poisoning from these activities, until Chinese prospectors started to buy gold
nuggets from artisanal miners.
To increase their turnover
rates, the Chinese buyers had given some of the artisanal miners grinding
machines, which most miners started to use within their homes to meet up with
demands. Unable to afford the machines, others resorted to using their domestic
grain grinding machines to grind the ore, to extract the gold dust which
attracted a higher commercial value.
Weekly Trust has learnt the
growing business has attracted other national from neighbouring countries to
the state. Yet the communities, where the gold is deposited in
commercial quantity, are dying in silence, while some are getting richer. The
levels of lead laden dust within their homes rose exponentially to toxic
levels and soon, children in these communities started to fall ill with lead
poisoning symptoms which the local health center initially mistook to be
cholera.
Finding grave in
search of gold
“There’s a gold rush that has
been expanding at an ever increasing rate since 2007 and it’s really picking up
now,” said Ivan Gayton, who is head of mission for MSF Nigeria
Gayton. Gold prices had nearly
doubled since 2008 and climbed to almost 70 per cent since 2010.
However, today, the Global
Rights, a non-governmental organisation, said, the problems associated with
mining in Zamfara go beyond the lead poisoning pandemic. It said other issues
such as the physical safety of miners, environmental and social impacts were
yet to be confronted. “In October 2011, four miners were trapped in a collapsed
mine at Dareta for days before they died. Neither the Federal nor the state
governments responded to the incident. Incidents like these will continue
unabated except if both the federal and state governments step up measures to
contain mining related disasters.
“It is the duty of government
to respect, protect and fulfill human rights. Where government fails to enforce
or protect the rights of its citizens when they are being violated by private
persons or entities, then government itself has itself breached the rights of
citizens through its passive acquiescence of criminal actions.”
The Global Rights added that
the top soil in seven communities have been remediated, and some of them have
already become re-contaminated, as the remediation had occurred in village
centers and lead contaminated earth on their outskirts had found their way into
the decontaminated areas. Again, some houses have been affected as lead tainted
bricks were used to build homes.
‘Gold deposit a
blessing’
According to both the state
and Federal Governments, “informal mining” is more of road to graves for those
considered as informal miners because of lack of professionalism, but the
“informal miners” had a contrary view, because, for them, it as a magic way out
of poverty and an opener to their wealth.
Haruna Rasheed, a miner and a
student at polytechnic in Zamfara state, told Global Right that “I can only
thank God for the gold he has blessed our community with. At least people like
me get a chance to make a living and have a better life.”
He said he earns more than
what a fresh graduate on level 8 Step 2 gets every month. “Graduates receive
N20,000 at the state while I make N30,000 monthly,” he said.
He argued that “everything
happens according to the will of God! We cannot stop eating, because our work
is dangerous. We cannot steal and we must not starve. The soil is arid [and]
yields very little crops. I have to go to school. Education is not free … it is
this gold God has blessed our community with…”
‘FG not supporting us’
The MSF said both the Federal
and state governments through state agencies had failed to respond
appropriately and adequately to the Zamfara disaster. However, Zamfara State
Commissioner for Environment, Alhaji Muktar Lugga, said at a workshop organized
by the Global Rights, in Gusau, Zamfara State that they received limited
support from the Federal Government.
“Zamfara State never got any
money from the Federal Government since this disaster happened. We have heard
that money has been approved in principle for many months, but that it is being
held back due to bureaucracy in Abuja,” Lugga said.
He, however, said the state
was determined to completely eliminate the dangers associated with informal
mining in the state. Lugga said in spite of promises by the Federal Government
to “intervene with funds and other support since the outbreak of the disaster,
nothing has happened for over two years.”
Earlier at another forum in
Abuja, Minister of Health Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu warned residents of
Zamfara State against another lead poisoning in the area, explaining that the
battle against lead poisoning in Zamfara State was not yet over.
The minister, speaking
through the Director of Public Health in the Ministry, Dr. Mansur Kabiru, at an
International Conference on Lead Poisoning in Abuja, said “for us to sustain
the gains we have made, we need to strengthen coordination among stakeholders
so that the collective national interventions can be cost effective.”
N800m needed for
cleanup
Gayton said Zamfara
desperately needed a comprehensive approach to environmental remediation,
medical treatment, and safer mining, adding that “if that are not in place six
months from now, I’m going to start crying negligence.”
In May this year, almost two
years after calling for a drastic action to save the lives of many, MSF decried
lack of action by the Federal Government to tackle the lead poisoning epidemic
in Zamfara State. The ministers of mines, environment and health failed to show
up at a two-day conference on the lead poisoning in the state organised by MSF.
“This conference that we just
spent a lot of money holding, they expressed their support for it, but none of
the decision makers actually turned up,” Ivan Gayton, the head of MSF Nigeria,
told Reuters. “So the opportunity to announce concrete action was to some
extent really missed.”
“It does concern us that
perhaps they (Nigeria’s government) don’t realise the scale of the problem and
are not engaging at the level we think they should be,” Gayton said.
An 800 million naira ($5.08
million) funding proposal from the environment ministry intended to finance
safe mining programmes had never materialised, he said.
