By Charles Akpeji, Jalingo 


Nigerian Union of Mining Workers, North East chapter, has raised the alarm over alleged encroachment of Taraba State government on the mining site of neighbouring Adamawa State.

The union also claimed that all the miners recently arrested by the Taraba government had been carrying out their legitimate mining activities in Adamawa.

Governor Agbu Kefas of Taraba, recently, placed a ban on mining activities in the state.

To enforce the ban, a committee headed by a retired Army General was put in place by the governor to clamp down on illegal miners.

Briefing newsmen, yesterday, in Jalingo, Secretary of the North East Union of Mining Workers, Salisu Shaibu, said those the committee arrested were miners in Adamawa and not Taraba.

Claiming that Tongo Local Council, where the miners were reportedly arrested is in Adamawa and not Taraba, the union said the need for the governor and President Bola Tinubu to wade in has become necessary

Shaibu, who alleged that the committee overstepped its bounds, called on the authorities and other stakeholders to press on the committee to release all miners in its custody.

Apart from the arrests, the union, who also alleged that its members were manhandled by the committee, and gold worth millions of naira confiscated from them, also wants the committee to release the confiscated gold.

“We, as a union, will never support any form of illegal mining. We welcome well-intended reforms in the mining industry, but due process should be followed in implementing such reforms,” he said.

He beckoned the state government “to make proper findings on which state the site where the miners were dislodged and arrested belong.”

Chairman of the committee, Gen. Jeremiah Faransa (rtd), who recently paraded over 300 suspected illegal miners, expressed dismay at the level of destruction allegedly inflicted on the Taraba environment.

Reeling out the level of devastation of the environment by ‘illegal miners’, he said the miners were all arrested in Bali Local Council of Taraba.