•Plight of communities bedeviled by deadly gold rush that has killed scores of children
Health authorities in Niger State are battling with lead poisoning arising from gold mining activities in some communities in the state. Assistant Editor, ADEKUNLE YUSUF, reports that more than 20 children as well as adults and even cattle have died without an end yet in sight for the ugly trend.
It is like a journey to the underworld, overflowing with forebodings and confounding discoveries. The undulating, rock-strewn road is littered with several small rivers without bridges, spewing a backbreaking motorcycle trip that lasts for more than three lengthy hours from the nearest place with semblances of civilization. And after braving all the odds on a strenuous journey, the small village instantly gives itself up as a settlement that is rough, tough and lacking in all appurtenances of good living; yet it pulsates with excitement in its accustomed rusticity. At least, that is the feeling a first-time visitor gets at first glance in Shikira, a gold-rich village that is tucked away in the belly of Niger State’s Rafi Local Government Area.
But after more than a cursory look, the thin veneer of communal throbbing melts instantaneously, uncorking the veiled mourning in the land as some of the bereaved bare tales of sorrow welling up in their grieving hearts. The locals have genuine reasons to be sad. Two months ago, a ‘mysterious’ disease sneaked into Shikira like a thief in the night, killing eleven children with all the avoidable deaths occurring within weeks. Medical authorities attributed the deaths to lead poisoning, occasioned by artisanal gold mining and processing activities taking place in the village.
“We lost 11 children within a few weeks,” lamented Nuhu dan Magiro, 80-year old head of Shikira, who added that his people were completely heartbroken after discovering the cause of the mortalities. He however maintained that his village had never been visited with any misfortune as a result of lead poisoning until recently. The age of the deceased kids ranged from six months to one year, he said.
Shedding light into how the recent tragedy started, he said nobody had an inkling of what was happening when his people were coming to his residence to lodge complaints of strange illnesses.
“They just kept coming one after the other about sickness of their children. None of us knew what was happening until they told us that it is gold poisoning,” Magiro said.
As the villagers in Shikira lament for losing their innocent kids to the same vocation that has brought them smiles over hassles imposed by the grinding poverty domiciling in the backyards, it was discovered that they were not alone in the tragedy that has befallen them. Shikira, a village accessible mainly through motorcycles, shares this wicked fate with Tungan Kawo, where 17 children also died as a result of lead poisoning.
Tungan Kawo, which is situated southward of Shikira, is also in Rafi Local Government Area. Like other villages, Shikira and Tunga Kawo lack social amenities. The only meaningful health facility around is the General Hospital, Kagara, which some of the villagers have to travel for hours by motorcycle to access treatment. Besides the fact people live in mud houses, the source of drinking water in many villages visited is the stream or river, where they also wash the gem stones after successful mining hauls.
Shikira has only one primary school that serves many villages no secondary school as wards in the surrounding villages have to trek several hours to receive secondary school education in Madaka, another village in the same local government area where rudimentary gold mining and processing is a booming vocation among the poor locals.
Like their counterparts in other parts of the state, inhabitants of these embattled communities who were predominantly farmers have dumped agriculture for artisanal mining. Contrary to reports that gold mining is a recent discovery in the villages, it is a vocation that dates back to several years. The district head told The Nation that illegal “gold mining has been going on in this community before my late father was born.”
However, there has been a change in the business, starting from last September when residents of the two communities, especially those involved in the illegal mining, started dying. Unfortunately, by the time tragedy started rearing its ugly head in the villages, it was ignorantly attributed to some terrible evil spirits that angrily swathed the land. Pronto all manner of soothsayers, whose services were quickly sought, suggested that a particular banana plantation, where the spirits were claimed to be taking abode, be destroyed. And the villagers wasted no time in carrying out the propitiation rites as directed. Rather than abate, lead contamination continued to mow down the children in the communities before providence smiled on them.
A heavy price children killed by contamination
Although official figures claimed that 28 children died, it was difficult to ascertain the actual number of deaths arising from lead poisoning. The reason is premised on the fact the deaths did not take place at once and that it took long before the communities came to grasp with the cause of recurrent deaths that plagued their homes. Worse still, most of the communities are too remote to attract the attention of medical personnel in good time. Some villagers even claimed that they buried their deceased wards without knowing the cause of their deaths, while some assumed it was mere fever.
All this, some villagers said, contributed to the worsening of the problem before the federal and state health authorities came to the rescue. According to Dr. Mustapha Usman, Director of Public Health, Niger State, initial data at the time showed that 65 children were affected while 28 deaths had already been recorded as at that time. This forced the state government to embark on emergency treatment procedure for the sick children.
“The next thing we did with the children still affected by the illness was to evacuate about 15 of them to Anka in Zamfara State, where MSF is managing a situation like that already. We sent all the children there and they are all back. They have been treated, they are back and we are still monitoring them,” he told The Nation.
Dr. Michelle Chouinard, Head of Mission/Country Representative of MSF, who confirmed that the children received treatment in one of the MSF facilities, however, added that “it is only one round of treatment” that the children received. According to her, treatment of lead poisoning takes a long time, requiring several rounds of treatment.
“They received only one round of treatment and their mothers insisted that they wanted to go back home. One of them who had not yet completed the one round also insisted to join those that were going, and that was it,” she said.
But unlike the parents of the 15 seriously affected children, many homes were not that lucky to enjoy the caring heart of the state government before their wards gave up the ghost. One of those still smarting from the painful loss of their children is Fati Umar, 30, who said she has not been feeling fine since tragedy struck in her household, killing her twins her only children. Coming close to tears as she stood by the entrance of her family compound to narrate the wicked fate that befell her, she said: “I am not feeling fine at all. My twins, my only children are gone.”
She added that her 18-month-old deceased children ran excessive temperature that worsened into convulsion before they gave up the ghost two months ago. Umar, her husband who is a gold processor, was said to be in the mine field when this reporter visited their compound in Shikira.
Almost in a similar way, Alira Amodu, 40, lost a girl out of her 10 children to lead poisoning, also in Shikira. Alira, a trader whose husband is a farmer-turned gold miner, said she truly did not know what killed her girl, admitting that it was later it dawned on her that her child died as a result of lead exposures that sent other children to their untimely graves. The death of her kid took place at a time health authorities were yet to unravel the mystery behind persistent ailments and deaths in the villages. And as if she and her entire household had learnt no lesson from their recent misfortune, some of her remaining children were seen processing raw gold ore with bare hands in the family compound all through the duration of this conversation with their mother involving sieving the particles after mixing very well with water.
Asked if she was unaware of the deadly implications of what her children were doing, their mother retorted rather perfunctorily: “I have told them to stop it.” Oblivious of any dangerous effect of processing gold ore with bare hands in the living compound, the children simply looked the other way as they carried on with their preoccupation without even a whimper from their mother who should know better, having swallowed the bitter pill of bereavement some months back. It would however take a heart of stone not to feel pity for Ibrahim Galadima, a farmer who lost six children to the poison in quick succession. Four of his children fell sick at the same time and died one after the other without an inkling that the deaths were as a result of the contaminated water resulting from the lead poisoning. After the four died, two other children gave up the ghost in the same pattern, leaving the household traumatised and heartbroken.
Other tales of sorrow abound in other villages where children have died as a result contamination from gold mining and processing. Even in some communities where there is no official figure of death attributable to gold poisoning, scars of effects of the dangerous vocation are too obvious for anyone to ignore. While deaths of children easily attract headlines, adults too are constantly lost to artisanal gold mining activities, as accidents in mines are said to be claiming lives. Unfortunately, these often go unreported in far-flung communities where it is not unusual to see many young men with amputated legs.
One of such unlucky teenagers is Muhammed Sanni, now an amputee after embarking on a gold hunting expedition that turned awry last month in Igedi, Mashegu Local Government Area of the state. According to him, he had barely entered a mining hole when he fell into the pit. A stone fell on him, wounding him severely in the process. Two of his colleagues were however not that lucky as they died instantly. Two other were also brutally injured.
Hub of gold mining
According to geological archives, Niger State is enormously blessed with deposits of mineral resources: gold, talc, kyanite, kaolin, ball clays, graphite, feldspar, marble and dolomite, manganese, mica, lead and copper, quartzite, asbestos, iron, silica sand, granite, and gemstones of various varieties. And with current gold prices hovering around $35 million per ton, artisanal mining seems to be an irresistibly important economic activity to the locals. Some miners who spoke with The Nation said a bag of 50kg of the stones goes for N800 or more. A ground bag of same stones can be sold for N1,500 or more, though government has asked them to stop the dangerous activities after the unfortunate deaths.
The fact taxes are not being levied also makes gold mining adding little or no contribution to the development of the state, while huge profits are being made by mine owners who are mostly from other states and foreigners as well.
A walk through the communities also shows that the environmental impact of these artisanal mines has been disastrous. In some villages, there are no livestock a rarity in the northern parts of the country where farming is a pastime in many families. With wood being used for the construction of some of the mines as well as for fuel for cooking in the mining villages, accelerated deforestation is a massive issue. Living conditions in the mining villages are poor, just as they suffer water contamination, large-scale air and soil pollution. Health problems are rife, with strong possibility that miners may be suffering pulmonary and infectious diseases.
On artisanal mining sites, various types of workers can be found in mines scattered across many local government areas of the state. At the top of the chain are the mine owners, who usually get the largest share of the profit. In some cases, nobody lays any ownership claim to the mines. Then there are the diggers, usually young men, and sometimes boys, working long hours to get a small percentage of the mined products or, more often than not, a salary from the proprietor who financed the building of the mine shaft. And there are boys who operate on their own, free from the lordship of any profiteers. And their tools are rudimentary pickaxes, buckets and hammers. Safety equipment is non-existent and the work is unhealthy and dangerous, with feelings that an unspecified number of artisanal miners die every year unannounced in the villages.
When asked if the state was aware that other communities in the state were under the siege of illegal gold mining, Dr Usman answered in the affirmative. But he was quick to assert that the state is working on a framework to address the issue across-the-board.
Condemning the response of authorities to the lead poisoning crisis, Global Rights, a global human rights defender, said it is regrettable that since a rapid response committee comprising of government agencies, NGOs and international aid partners was set up, the government is yet to implement any tangible intervention to prevent further deaths or to educate the affected community and other vulnerable communities on the causes and prevention of further deaths.
“In May 2015, the Federal Ministry of Health broke the news of the death of 28 children with 65 others critically ill from lead poisoning, at Shikira, a remote community in Rafi Local Government Area of Niger State. A few days later, a rapid response committee comprising of government agencies, NGOs and international aid partners was set up and 10 acutely sick children were transported to Zamfara State to commence treatment. Apart from this action, regrettably, the government is yet to implement any tangible intervention to prevent further deaths or to educate the affected community and other vulnerable communities on the causes and prevention of further deaths.
“Apart from the 28 casualties recorded, other children in the community had been exposed to lead and are at risk of brain damage and multiple organ failure. While the adult population is better able to tolerate the effects of lead poisoning, they are ultimately vulnerable to its effects. The effects of lead poisoning are usually permanent, and irreversible. There are currently no livestock at Shikira, a predominantly pastoral community, because most of the livestock had died from lead contamination.
“Other precarious effects of the lead poisoning outbreak include contamination of the community’s only water source and the soil nursing the crops on which the community depends for subsistence. Most of the effects of the lead contamination on the environment and the community members may take several years to manifest. There are currently no basic health facilities or medical personnel at the community, and the closest medical facility to the village is about a four-hour drive through non-existent roads,” said Global Rights’ director of information, Mrs. Abiodun Baiyewu-Teru.
Why more lives may be lost
According to one of the locals who acted as a tour guide, it is impossible to stop illegal mining as long as there is poverty in the communities, adding that the merchants of death have devised ingenious ways of silencing the traditional leaders whose communities are being put on ‘death-row’ with huge sums of money so that they can look the other way while the deadly operation thrives in their backyards. Perhaps that explains why some village heads who spoke to The Nation were quick to vouch that there are no mining activities in their communities a claim that easily falls on its face when the miners start returning in droves from their hunting expeditions.
Despite an order that mining should stop, the locals still troop to the mines to scoop the gem stones in order to make money. Although there is no information on any latest contamination, Chouinard said the villages and their inhabitants cannot be said to be safe until an environmental remediation is carried out in all the affected communities. This fear is also nursed by Sheu Anka, director of pollution in the Zamfara State Environmental Sanitation Agency (ZESA), who is one of those that were brought into the affected communities to carry out the soil testing to ascertain the level of contamination. He said 43 compounds in Magiro, 22 compounds in Kawo and other places were still contaminated.
“The villages are highly contaminated,” he said, adding that the level of soil poisoning in Niger State is far higher than what his state suffered recently. “Trouble is how to get money to carry out remediation because it is highly expensive to remediate the environment,” he said.
As for now, no one is sure of when the state and federal governments will come to the aid of these embattled communities. What is however not in doubt is that a large chunk of the state is under siege by illegal miners who migrate in large numbers to different villages to ply their dangerous trade, with disastrous consequences for the residents in around illegal mining sites that abound in the state.
