The Commander, Mining Marshals of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), Mr John Attah Onoja, has vowed to sustain efforts to dismantle illegal mining cartels and disrupt illicit financing linked to banditry, kidnapping and terrorism.
Onoja made the commitment on Thursday in Abuja when members of the Defence Correspondents Association of Nigeria (DECAN), led by its President, Mr Odita Sunday, paid a courtesy visit to his office.
He said the Mining Marshals would remain uncompromising in enforcing mining laws and restoring sanity to a sector whose activities had increasingly taken on security dimensions.
According to him, illegal mining is not only an economic and environmental threat but also a potential source of funding for criminal and terrorist groups.
“It is not necessarily about picking up weapons and fighting bandits or kidnappers. We must ask: how do the people in those forests feed? How do they get money?” he said.
Onoja said disrupting the illicit flow of funds to criminal groups would weaken their operational capacity and make banditry and terrorism less attractive.
“We want to make criminality less lucrative. You can only make it less lucrative if the illicit flow of finances to terrorist groups is disrupted,” he said.
He said the Mining Marshals had adopted intelligence-led operations involving the identification, arrest, investigation and prosecution of offenders to ensure that perpetrators were brought to justice.
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Onoja added that the operation would continue to maintain a presence across mining communities as part of its deterrence strategy, despite limitations in manpower and logistics.
He urged the media, particularly defence correspondents, to support the fight through accurate, responsible and sustained reporting on illegal mining and its security implications.
“I do not take your role for granted. The sanitised mining sector of our dream will be achieved through collaboration, and the major stakeholder in that collaboration is the media,” he said.
The commander also called on journalists to assess the performance of the Mining Marshals alongside the logistics available to the operation, noting that inadequate resources remained a major constraint.
He, however, identified alleged collusion between some compromised officials and illegal miners as a major challenge threatening efforts to sanitise the sector.
“The major bottleneck we face today is not necessarily the number of illegal miners out there, but the number of compromised officials of institutions and agencies that are supposed to be partners in the fight against illegal mining,” he said.
Onoja alleged that some compromised officials had resorted to blackmail and petitions against the Mining Marshals in attempts to frustrate their operations.
“That is corruption fighting back,” he said, stressing that the fight against illegal mining must be genuine, deliberate and enforced without bias or selectivity.
He said illegal mining threatened the environment, national revenue and increasingly, national security, making effective collaboration among security agencies, the media and other stakeholders imperative.
“As defence correspondents, we understand that effective security operations require not only the commitment of security agencies but also responsible and accurate public communication,” he said.
He assured the Mining Marshals that DECAN would give appropriate attention to their activities while ensuring that reports did not compromise operational security or personnel safety.
He said timely access to verified information was critical to promoting public understanding of the dangers posed by illegal mining and the measures being taken to combat it.
He further called for stronger professional engagement between DECAN and the Mining Marshals through regular briefings, field visits and other activities aimed at improving mutual understanding.
He said the media would continue to inform, educate and hold institutions accountable while respecting legitimate national security requirements.
The Mining Marshals operation was launched on March 21, 2024, as a specialised NSCDC initiative to combat illegal mining and protect Nigeria’s critical mineral resources.
