Date: 2017-05-06

No fewer than 30 illegal miners may have lost their lives in recent times in Kaima Local Government area of Kwara State.

A member of the state House of Assembly, Hon. Muhammed Baaziki, representing Kaima State Constituency in the House disclosed this.

Baaziki, who spoke on the floor of the House on Tuesday, decried the activities of illegal miners scattered all over the state.

The lawmaker said, "The illegal miners use hazardous blast to blow open the mines and this usually have adverse effects on the health of workers on site, who normally do not wear protective gear.

There was a time the locals counted more than 30 corpses at the mine site."The Speaker, Rt. Hon. Ali Ahmad, frowned on a situation where the state was being shortchanged by the illegal miners.

Ahmad decried the impunity with which the miners operate by making it impossible to ascertain the volume of what they mine, resulting in the loss of the 13 percent derivation that should accrue to the state.

He, however, pledged the resolve of the house to ensure that the activities of the illegal miners were curtailed and the state got the appropriate revenue for all its natural resources mined. "It is saddening that Kwara has been adjudged the state with worst cases of illegal mining in the whole of Africa. This is an embarrassing statistics," he stressed.