A day out with Zamfara gold miners

In the sheds of trees, exhausted men were answering nature’s call in the most grotesque of postures, using rocks and tools as pillows. Elsewhere, others chatted boisterously, and a few gathered inside a tea-shop ordering breakfast.Most of the men had one distinct characteristic: they were covered from head to toe in dust and dirt, which […]

In the sheds of trees, exhausted men were answering nature’s call in the most grotesque of postures, using rocks and tools as pillows. Elsewhere, others chatted boisterously, and a few gathered inside a tea-shop ordering breakfast.
Most of the men had one distinct characteristic: they were covered from head to toe in dust and dirt, which glued on to them from hours of searching for gold. Some of the men had their hair matted in sand wads, and mangy clothes draped their bodies. A blacksmith shop, where all the tools in the camp are reforged, sat reclusively under a tree.
All about, the mining site is crisscrossed by burrows and mounds. Where there is no heap or dug-out, makeshift tents stand as shelters. A couple of metres off, a macadamized road, still under construction, runs adjacently. Inside a hut, a court was hearing a case of character defamation against one of the camp members.
The Dareta mining site is one of the dozen places in Zamfara State where the discovery of gold in commercial quantity has encouraged flow of miners and rush for the precious mineral. The mine was named after Dareta village, located less than five kilometres away. The village came to limelight after the outbreak of lead poisoning, which was associated with gold mining activities in the state in 2010. It was one of the hard hit areas after Bagega, Abare, Yar Galma and others.
A year after, the local mine was pronounced a shocking human tragedy when a pit caved in on four miners and buried them alive. All the trapped men eventually died underneath piles of rocks and sand over 200m underground. Because of the incident and subsequent police clampdown, the mine was closed and the diggers relocated.
It was at the site that the court was sitting, not far from the scene of the collapse. At the outset of the proceeding, a twist was introduced to the case such that the complainant became the accused person. The court is not guided by any written law; what constitutes an offence and what should be its penalty are the prerogative of the judge and his decisions are final and binding. No appeal.
The initial complaint, now the accused person, is a miner and a novice in the trade. He had been inducted into the business only about two weeks earlier by his uncle, the man who was now suing him for character attack.
Sani, as the accused person is simply called, was the first to approach the court, seeking redress over his uncle’s, Lawwali, alleged unjust act. Lawwali heads the team where his nephew works as a labourer. But Sani accused Lawwali of being unfair in the handling of the group’s mine while he was away to visit home, saying his uncle had carried out some unfair actions, including the recruitment of more labourers, which he interpreted as ‘injustice’ and asked the court to correct.
But while the case was still at its infancy, the court ruled that Sani’s allegation was lacking substance and, therefore, injurious to the reputation of a co-miner. The court also ordered the detention of Sani and gave a date for his trial over defamation of character.
The judge who was presiding over the case was the camp head himself and a son of the village head of Dareta, Umar Shehu Dareta, popularly known as Ubandaba. I first met him after the mine incident that killed four of his men in 2011. When I mentioned his name to the cutlass-wielding guards at the entrance of the court, and uttered something to the effect that I recognized one of them, they quickly ushered me in.
Ubandaba was magnanimous to spare time out of the court session to welcome me. He did not forget my face, he announced. As he resumed the issue at hand, I became interested. The court had a dogari (a guard), sakatare (scribe) and the two guards posted outside to man the entrance, who were referred to as matambaya (the interrogators or questioners). Everyone inside was seated on a mat. There were about three gold dealers and two miners in attendance. The last person that was seated close to the judge and facing him was Lawwali, the new complainant. The accused person was not present in court and was not represented.
Lawwali went the whole hog to tell the court how his nephew’s allegations have damaged his reputation in the eyes of fellow miners and how he was sure they will do the same when he and the accused person return home. Lawwali further told the court that he had been the one responsible for feeding and taking care of his nephew from the day he brought him from the village up to the day the latter slighted him.
After the lengthy submission, he told the court that he was willing to forfeit the well over which Sani was accusing him of injustice, if the accused person would be made to refund all the money he had spent managing the dug-out. The well in question had not started yielding gold when the suit was instituted.
After listening to the complainant, the court ordered that Sani could be brought to hear its verdict, while issuing a caveat that his release from detention could only be possible after he pays N1000 bail fee. At that point, the case was stalled. The court’s matambaya were sent to enquire from the detainee if he had the money to buy his way to trial and they came back with a ‘no’ answer. Through the court guards, Sani sent word to his uncle to assist him to make it to the trial. After a while, another miner who claimed to be from the same village as the complainant paid the amount.
As Sani appeared before the court, the verdict, which was a replica of his uncle’s prayer – the only distortion being that the court had arrived at N900,000 as the amount he was going cough out – was quickly read out to him, following which he was given the option of accepting it or returning to his cell. Sani, who appeared to be in his late 20s, pleaded for mercy of the court, reminding it that he was a newcomer and had not yet earned a kobo. As his near-tears entreaties continued, the judge ordered his matambaya to whisk him away. Surprisingly, his uncle was touched and he begged the court to allow him to settle out-of-court with his nephew.
It was not out of the court’s powers to grant the prayer, provided the court was going to get something for that, the judge ruled. Ubandaba took time to explain to the litigants how his court dispenses justice. “In my court, you get the kind of justice you deserve. If you come to me with hot water, I will use it to cook you; if you bring cold water, I will use it to cook you and; if it is dead water that you bring, I will use it to cook you,” he said, dilating his eyes and poking a finger into the soil through a pore in the mat.
He now turned to the accused person. “Why must you take pleasure in running down somebody’s character? Do you know that such a diatribe could harm his relationship with miners here and people back at home?” he queried. When the accused open his mouth to refute the charges, the matambaya and other audience shouted him down. “Don’t interrupt him,” the judge intervened, “let him pour out the hot water I will use to cook him.”
Save for the audience, the litigants hardly show approval with most of the judge’s comments. Ubandaba ordered that N1000 must be paid for the two to be allowed to discuss out-of-court settlement, outside. After the court’s sakatare had registered the money, the judge said they had only five minutes to trash out the matter and return to the courtroom.
As the uncle, his nephew and the man from their village stepped out, the judge retorted: “It is God that gave us this position. Sakatare, you know we woke up penniless this morning before God brought this case to us. Aren’t we going to make the best out of it and have them cough big money?” he asked sarcastically, to which people in the court answered, “you are right.”
The judge turned to the scribe again, winking an eye, “You said you wanted to visit your family, what would you have taken to them? I also wanted to send something to my family and was thinking where on earth to get money. I was sitting on my own when they brought the case and what do you expect me to do? It is when someone loses that another gains.”
After the speech, the judge yelled at the guards to bring back the litigants. When they told the court that they have resolved the matter between them¸ Ubandaba ordered his scribe to note it and requested for the court’s share of the settlement. They arrived at a handsome amount after thorough bargaining. But to the chagrin of Sani, the court refused to allow him walk free unless he parted with more.
Payment at the camp does not always have to be immediate. Often, an offender can pledge to pay a certain sum and have it written down until when he hits a goldmine. At other times, dealers lend money to offenders to bail themselves out.
When Sani heard the court ordering its matambaya to haul him back into detention, his newly earned happiness quickly melted away. With the help of the court’s dogari, he raised N1000 for the court and promised to bring a bag of unprocessed ore, later in the day. Before releasing him, the judge warned the dogari that stood as surety for the accused person thus: “If he does not bring the bag at the promised time, I will have no problems with him but you. I will detain you and you may risk losing your place in my court, as well as losing your appointment.”
As though to mark the successful completion of an eventful trial, a big wrap of Indian hemp was lit and passed around, from the judge, to dealers and to guards and other officials of the court.
But the fear which Sani repeatedly exuded at the mention of cell struck a chord with me and I requested to be shown the cell. Ubandaba obliged and instructed his trusted matambaya, Dankulu and Baura, to lead me to the facility.
The cell was in every sense an attack on human dignity and antithetical to human rights and whatever it stands for – that is if such a concept has travelled as far as the camp. There was no building or enclosure serving as the detention facility. All that was there to the cell was a large ball of dried species of thorns, about the size of a small car. Once an offender is ordered to be taken into custody, the matambaya will escort him to the mountain spikes and force him to kneel down. Using their sticks, they will beat the thorns on him until he is completely enmeshed in it and weighed down underneath, with piercing spikes nibbling at his flesh. A detainee can spend hours or days in such a tortuous state. Other forms of punishment can range from lashes to outright dislodgment from the camp. Offences like stealing and fighting can result in any of the extreme penalties. “We miners don’t co-exist with thieves and troublesome people. They are a bad presence and we dislike them”, Ubandaba would later tell me.
To be continued next week.