Sand miners and dredgers in Lagos under the auspices of Federal Cadastres Miners’ Association (FCMA) yesterday urged Governor Akinwunmi Ambode to lift the ban on sand mining.
The miners, who, in conjunction with Activists for Good Governance (AFGG), protested in Ipaja, said over 5,000 of their members were “near starvation” because of the ban.
AFGG National Coordinator Declan Ihekaire, who addressed reporters on the group’s behalf, described the “stop work” order by the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources as “strange and totally unknown to the 1999 Constitution.”
The Constitution, he argued, vests control of mining activities in the federal and not state government, adding that this has been “corroborated by a judgment of the Court of Appeal in Lagos.”
“We call on the Lagos State Government to reverse the strange stop work order. Governor Ambode has no doubt excelled in some areas, we call on him to redress this injustice as is expected of a listening democratic government,” Ihekaire said.
The miners, numbering about 500, marched on Ipaja Road, carrying placards with inscriptions such as, “Governor Ambode, we are the legitimate miners”; “This stop work order is encouraging illegal mining” and “Revenue accruable to the Federal Government stopped owing to the stop work order”.
The FCMA alleged that despite the ban, dredging permits could still be illegally obtained from some officials.
This, Ihekaire said, was done “using different fronts to extort various sums of money from legitimate miners ranging from N250,000 to N1,000,000.”
He added: “As a way out of this imbroglio, the Lagos State Government should as a matter of urgency strengthen the relationship between the federal and state governments on mining -related matters.
“This is contained in Section 19 of the Nigerian Minerals and Mining Act, 2007, which provides for the establishment of the Mineral Resources and Environmental Management Committee (MIREMCO)”.
In January, the government ordered sand dredgers operating on the waterways in the state to stop their operations.
The order followed the fracas between Folarin and Ebute-Ilaje communities in Bariga, Lagos, over dredging sites.