JUST IN: Buried Alive!

By Admin

In recent weeks, I have had the opportunity to walk the streets of Congo-Russia—an infamous hub for illicit activities such as drugs, sex, and guns—in Jos North Local Government Area. I also attended numerous meetings with Fulani Ardos and community leaders, including within the much-feared Mahanga enclave in Riyom LGA.

Sharing the same vehicle with retired Justice Esther Amina Lolo of the Kaduna High Court has provided me with great insight into life and our nation. I have also learned much from my fellow members: Mr. Jonathan Kure, AVM Ibrahim Shafii (rtd), Alhaji Lawal Usman Safana, Mr. Yakubu Bawa, Dr. Peter Gad Shamaki, Hajiya Amina Elelu Ahmed, and our secretary—Plateau State’s only indigene on the panel—Mr. Timothy Baba Parlong. Yet perhaps the most unexpected education has come from Ben, our driver, who, like many in his trade, has proven to be a wellspring of information.

Under the leadership of our chairman, Major General Rogers Nicolas (rtd), we traversed Plateau State for weeks on this delicate assignment, which is nearing conclusion. In nearly every local government area we visited, we encountered crowds scavenging at mining sites. But last month, something struck me deeply. Passing through one community teeming with miners, Ben remarked casually: “Three people were buried alive at that site some weeks ago,” pointing to one of the countless informal pits scarring the land. Buried alive! The phrase lingered with me like an epitaph never written, haunting my thoughts for days.

Back in Abuja, I began researching this grim reality and soon realized why Ben had spoken so casually. Mining-related deaths—especially site collapses burying workers alive—occur with disturbing regularity across Nigeria. In Plateau, Zamfara, Kebbi, and other states, desperate citizens claw at the earth for tin, gold, and other minerals, with death treated as little more than an occupational hazard. The silence surrounding these tragedies reflects how expendable some lives are deemed in our society.

In Plateau State last November, a group of women at a mining site on Fan Road, Barkin-Ladi LGA, were swallowed alive when the ground beneath them collapsed. Among them was a breastfeeding mother who had brought her baby to feed. “As she was just breastfeeding, the ground swallowed them all,” recalled Sunday Davou Gyang, a local who had earlier lost his son—a 400-level civil engineering student of the University of Jos—in a similar incident.

Even if many Nigerians missed that story, what about the disaster that made front-page news in June 2024? At a mining pit collapse in Galkogo Community, Shiroro LGA, Niger State, dozens of workers remained trapped under a 400-metre hole for weeks. Despite initial rescue efforts by the company, African Minerals and Logistics Limited, and the government, operations were abandoned, leaving families to grieve without bodies. Just months before, nine miners met the same fate in Dogon Daji village, Zamfara State. The mine became their grave.

The absence of national outrage over such tragedies is telling. This is not an equal-opportunity calamity. Those who die in collapsing mines are not the children of politicians, top bureaucrats, bankers, or oil executives. They are the desperately poor—farmers displaced by insecurity, uneducated youth, struggling mothers, and even children risking death to stave off hunger. These “survival miners” descend into unsafe, hand-dug pits with no equipment, no regulation, and no protection. Their deaths are dismissed as statistics, when in fact they expose systemic injustice: they die not because they are reckless, but because they are poor.

This speaks to a broader dysfunction. From oil to minerals, Nigeria has consistently treated natural resources as loot for individuals rather than as national assets for collective growth. Informal mining, which is claiming thousands of lives, is only a symptom. Real mineral wealth requires infrastructure, technology, regulation, and long-term planning. What we have instead is a desperate scramble—one that enriches no one, sustains no economy, and destroys countless families.

Ironically, Nigeria holds some of the world’s most diverse mineral reserves. With proper management, mining could generate massive employment and drive economic diversification. Instead, we have a “wild west” industry where poverty and desperation meet unchecked opportunity in the deadliest possible way. Even more disturbing is our collective amnesia: when miners are buried alive, there are no national headlines, no emergency inspections, no official accountability.

This indifference is not confined to mining. In Nigeria, we have built a hierarchy of grief: proximity to power dictates outrage. Celebrity scandals dominate headlines while hundreds perish in silence. The failure to tell these stories or honor these lives represents a triple failure—of governance that allows unregulated mining, of an economy that traps people in desperation, and of a society that has learned to look away.

What is urgently needed is intervention—safety inspections, training, and emergency response systems. But beyond this, we must address the hopelessness that forces people into these death traps. Until Nigeria builds an economy that values every citizen, the graves dug by poverty will continue to swallow the forgotten.

(Copied from Phoenix)