Adams Oshiomhole, chairman of the Senate Committee on Interior, has doubled down on his allegation that some retired military generals, in connivance with foreigners, are stealing Nigeria’s solid minerals.
Oshiomhole clarified his initial claim during an interview on Tuesday, February 4, 2025, saying he didn’t accuse all retired generals of illegal mining but some of them.
He said it is not sensible to say all retired generals are involved in the illegal mining of Nigeria’s natural resources.
“It’s not sensible to say so. That would be a reckless, sweeping generalization. That is not what I said. I said the problem is that some, and I still believe it to be so; I know it to be so. I said some retired generals are involved. And somehow, we are not deploying the same force as a nation that we deploy to protect our oil in the Niger Delta,” the senator said.
Oshiomhole said his claim is based on the report of a retired general who witnessed foreigners stealing solid minerals in the country in connivance with “some retired generals.”
He said he asked the retired general who narrated the story to write a two—or three-page report on the matter, which he submitted to former President Muhammadu Buhari.
“There is no way I can comprehend this story because I have no military training or secret training. I pleaded with him to do a summary, not more than two, a maximum of three pages, that I will submit as chairman of the ruling party at that time, that l will submit to the president, who incidentally is a retired general before becoming the president of Nigeria.
“So he will understand the issues more clearly. I advised him to put his phone number so that the president can call him if he so wishes and give him this detailed security dimension. Because he warned me that if that thing is not checked, what is happening in the Northeast will be child’s play.
“And so I took this letter, as I promised him, because I saw a patriotic officer, though retired, but not tired of his loyalty to Nigeria. And I gave it to the then President Buhari.
“And I said, sir, go through it; it is self-explanatory. My advice is that you can call him, and he can give you more graphic details of what he saw and what he knows and his fears about what will happen if this is not nipped in the bud,” Oshiomhole recalled.
He maintained that illegal activity of such magnitude would not be going on in the country without some powerful people knowing about it.
“It is absolutely impossible for anyone, particularly foreigners, far away outside the African continent, coming to Nigeria, locating a site, not being geologists and they go straight to where they can find particular solid minerals, and they start mining it, and they take it away,” he said.
However, the ex-governor of Edo State pointed out that President Bola Tinubu’s administration has started tackling the problem with the recent establishment of marshals to police Nigeria’s mining sites.
VANGUARD
