OPINION:

WHO KILLED THE BOYS?

The death of no fewer than thirty-three unskilled artisanal miners in the custody of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) in Minna, Niger State, in one fell swoop, is a tragedy that has no parallel.

The victims, mostly young boys between fourteen and seventeen years, were arrested and detained by personnel of the NSCDC, Niger State Command. The boys were searching for gold in open fields, farmlands, floodplains and upstream areas of some communities.

The teenagers were only armed with hoes, shovels, head-pans and bowls as tools of their trade.

Whatever may have been wrong in the conduct of the teenage miners, their death in the hands of a security outfit is criminal negligence that smacks of contemptuous ineptitude and abuse of duty and responsibility on the part of the NSCDC in Niger State.

The teenage miners, numbering about sixty, were hounded into a single cell, crowded in an unventilated and unhygienic place and kept indoors for over forty-eight hours without trial or conviction.

A CORPS WITH QUESTIONS TO ANSWER

The NSCDC as a security body has in the past come under public scrutiny over its oversight functions, particularly in relation to civil outreach.

Some members of the Corps have repeatedly clashed with civil society groups, personnel of the Nigeria Police Force and community-based vigilante groups across the state over operational limits and alleged high-handedness.

In Minna, reports in early August this year revealed that a personnel of the NSCDC was hacked down by unknown assailants at a mining site in the Korokpa area of Bosso Local Government Area under suspicious circumstances. The NSCDC is yet to make public its findings on the killing, more than a month after.

Local miners in parts of Minna, Bosso and Paiko LGAs allege complicity by personnel of the NSCDC in illegal mining activities, claiming they give tacit support to so-called registered miners against artisanal miners.

It is alleged that across many mining sites located in the Shango area behind Abdulkadir Kure University, Kampala area, around Ndayako College of Education, Three Arms Zone in Minna, Chanchaga Bridge area, behind IBB Specialist Hospital, Tungan Waya farmlands, Korokpa community and several other places, NSCDC personnel are allotted their own mining pits. “This is the deal,” said one artisanal miner, “and we are forced to comply.”

Besides this, it is also alleged that every artisanal miner must part with over forty percent of his gold sales as “levy and royalty” to NSCDC personnel in the Niger Command.

On the heels of Thursday’s massive death in the detention cell in Minna, unsubstantiated reports have been trending that the top echelon of the Corps in the state demanded five hundred thousand naira as bail fee before a detained suspect could be released.

Whether this allegation is true or not, the detention of the teenage miners numbering about sixty for over twenty-four hours was in itself illegal, wrongful and extra-judicial.

It is primitive and nihilistic to hound over sixty persons into an inhumane, poorly ventilated room without water and food for over twenty hours.

QUESTIONS THAT MUST BE ANSWERED

Was the arrest and detention done to frighten other artisanal miners to create room for so-called registered companies, including foreigners operating freely in parts of the state?

Were the children killed to ward off others from venturing into the open fields in search of gold?

Is the NSCDC in concert with some powers-that-be in the mining sub-sector whose so-called licences give them rights to protect all landed areas from artisanal miners?

The claim by personnel of the NSCDC that the teenage miners were poisoned by substances they inhaled at the sites where they were picked up is a cock-and-bull story. No miner across the state is known to have died from inhaling any substance in the past.

Was any post-mortem examination conducted on the bodies by any hospital, qualified pathologist or state authority to ascertain the cause of death?

Who authorized the release of the corpses to their parents? Was the state government fully briefed point-by-point on what led to the death of the detainees?

Was the death avoidable? Was it an act of commission or negligence by the Corps in the state?

In normal duty schedule, the Corps should have filed a notice of prosecution at the State High Court or any court of competent jurisdiction a day after arrest.

Was this done, or was the authority waiting for the half-million naira bail fee from each parent?

Forty-eight hours after the boys were picked up at different mining sites in Maitumbi,  the Three Arms Zone  area and elsewhere, what other investigation was the Corps still waiting for?

Has the high command of the NSCDC in Abuja been briefed on the arrest and detention, and why has the Commandant-General not said a word since the gruesome death of thirty-three young teenagers in its facility?

Were the boys meant as a sacrifice? Human life is the sacrosanct property of God Almighty. Anyone who causes the death of a person must account for it in the hereafter.

May the souls of the departed rest in peace, but may justice find its true place in this inexplicable act of impunity and abuse of the right to life.

The state government’s initial reaction was the declaration of a three day mourning over the shocking death of the thirty seven unskilled artisanal miners.

The governor also announced the postponement of the planned flag off of his governorship reelection  campaign in the state capital.

Similarly, the governor disclosed the setting up an investigative panel to prove the death of the thirty seven teenage miners in the custody of the NSCDC.

This was not enough as spontaneous reactions from aggrieved youth sparked violent mob actions around Tunga area,  Maitumbi and from the volatile tribes of the Sabon Titi area  of Tudun wada area who had taken  to the street throwing pebbles and other objects at the police mobilized to curb  skirmishes and uglier upheavals in parts of the state capital especially at the Top Medical junction, the Tunga market area and the Abdullsalami motor garage corridor in Minna.

By Friday morning, tension had scaled up in parts of the capital city just as the rumour mill swelled with tales of pogrom and killings by police personnel.

Schools were promptly closed by authorities as parents ran helter skelta to pick up their wards. Then came the state governor’s decisive broadcast on the heels of the mounting tension.

A twenty four hours curfew was declared. It was the necessary step to arrest the volcanic reactions from lawless youths and restive persons poised to unleash mayhem and destructions of public properties, steal, looth and ransack other people’s properties.

Since the death of the teenage miners in the hands of the NSCDC in the state,  normalcy  had been murdered.

This is what a society gets when those who are paid to maintain law and order, turn the tide against the ruled. The consequences is not only on the polity but the populace and those who murdered sleep.

The mob actions were on some public and commercial places of business, political party office, the state’s mass transit buses, and some shops.

BY BALA B. BITRUS  a freelance writer in Niger State.