Much Ado About Zamfara State Gold

Do you know that Zamfara State has gold in commercial quantity and the battle for gold and gold mines is one  of the reasons why the killings going on in that state  won’t stop any time soon?

Zamfara is a mineral-rich state, with significant deposits of gold. The acute lead poisoning in Zamfara that happened few years ago was as a result of artisanal gold mining: small scale mining done with rudimentary tools.

Zamfara State has gold in commercial quantity, just like you have it  in South Africa.

The difference is that while South Africa government owns the gold mines and then also issue  license to companies prospecting for Gold, South Africa government as well  earns dollar revenue from the export of Gold

The country can also boast of a billionaire gold mogul Patrice Motsepe who made his billons selling gold.

In Nigeria, the reverse is the case .

Most  of the gold mining in Zamfara up until the present is carried out illegally. It is usually done by a ‘cartel’ that just shows up in these communities and begins to cart away the minerals in collaboration with ignorant and vulnerable community members.

Some of the illegal mine traders are from South Asian countries, especially China, but they do not perpetrate these criminal actions without the collaboration of some locals and the elites in Zamfara state.

The recent mass killings going in Zamfara  is not about bandits at all, but about massive gold deposits being mined by locals in collaboration with their foreign backers in South Africa and China  and turf wars being fought by different groups, clans, cartels and overlords to control the largest mining sites.

According to one unverified source, the kind of money that is coming out of the illegal mining going on in Zamfara is more than what we are earning from Crude oil sales as revenue but the irony is that while Niger Delta Crude oil belongs to all Nigerians, the gold deposits in Zamfara state as it were belong to the elites and people of Zamfara state.

One Nigeria indeed!