Lead poisoning claiming more in Zamfara

A notice pasted on the wall of village head’s residence reminisced the bleak period thus: “If you see a person with this disease … contact the nearest health worker or clinic immediately,” The message ended with a tempting note: “If confirmed, you will be paid a cash reward of N25, 000.” With time, the community […]

A notice pasted on the wall of village head’s residence reminisced the bleak period thus: “If you see a person with this disease … contact the nearest health worker or clinic immediately,”

The message ended with a tempting note: “If confirmed, you will be paid a cash reward of N25, 000.”

With time, the community has since recovered and put the disease at bay. Not a single fresh case has been recorded this year, while infected persons have been treated. “It gives us joy,” says Malam Umar Muhammad, the representative of the village head, who was also a victim.

But even before the scars on Muhammad’s leg disappeared, the village was hit by lead poisoning – a deadly disease that has killed children in Zamfara State more than it has done anywhere in the world.

In just about under six months, 11 children all below the age of five have died after suffering brief illnesses and manifesting symptoms suspected to be lead poisoning. “They convulsed, foamed in the mouth and became weak before dying,” Muhammad explained the nature of the strange ailment.

When the symptoms started appearing in children, parents who first attributed them to malaria fever were to be disturbed by the number of infected children and the death toll to suspect something more terrible.

The villagers quickly alerted authorities of Bukkuyum local government as last year’s outbreak of lead poisoning in Bagega, Dareta, Abare and Yar Galma villages, all located on the same axis as Dogon Daji, has helped enlightened people in the state on what to do in case of suspected lead poisoning.

Dogon Dajin Sarkin Noma, Weekly Trust learnt, is susceptible to lead poisoning attack for some reasons. Until the mysterious deaths and ailments forced a partial suspension of illegal mining in the area, processing of lead ore was done inside the village.

“Our wives crush the ore with mortars and while we take the sand to the stream to remove the gold,” said Muhammad. The streams are situated right inside the village. “First was the ducks swimming in the pools that started dying in numbers,” he recalled, adding however that “yet we did not know it has something to do with processing of the ore.”

Gold mining started about five years ago in the village after some youths discovered the presence of the precious stone on a cotton farm about one kilometre from the village centre. Miners and gold dealers were said to have trooped in their hundreds to the site, leaving the farm owner with no option than to relocate to another place.

Unlike other mines found around Zamfara where hundreds metres feet are dug underground before the mineral is accessed, at Dogon Daji, the gold ore layer or bed occur metres beneath the earth surface – in some places, just deep to the knee – according to the villagers.

Discovering Dareta and Bagega mines however shut down the one at Dogon Daji, as the illegal miners relocated. However, consequent upon the outbreak of lead poisoning in communities around the new mines last year, the miners returned to Dogon Daji.

“Up till this year’s raining season, people used to bring the ore home for women to crush and the processing was done inside the town,” Muhammad elaborated. “We did not experience the disease until this year.”

Since the suspected outbreak of lead poisoning in the village, health workers have collected blood samples of children, his four-months-old daughter inclusive. Though Muhammad said the baby was yet to manifest known symptoms of the disease, perforations and scaring of her chest is giving him fear she has been infected.

His brother, Musa Shehu, lost a six-month-old daughter to the disease about one week before we visited the village. He recalled that the little girl suffered fits of coughs, vomiting and seizures before she finally died.

Linking her death to gold extraction, Shehu stated that both he and his wife processed the gold ore inside their house.

Abubakar Chindo Tela is the town’s tailor. Though not directly involved in either mining or processing of gold, his wife was making money from crushing the minerals for others – inside their house. Two of his male children aged two and four respectively, have died after exhibiting the same signs as Shehu’s daughter.

“We did not know that the outcome was going to be this tragic,” he said.

Upon all the havoc wreaked on this community by lead poisoning, ore processing and washing was still being carried out in the town’s biggest pond – the one supplying water for making mud bricks by the locals.

Also, at the mining site located on the outskirt of the village, some men were busy digging the ground looking for gold. When asked if they were not afraid of infecting their children with lead poisoning, one Kassim Dan Gusau, who has dug above his head, retorted: “Those deaths have nothing to do with our activities. People must die when their time comes.”

His views might not be popular in the society, especially the number of people who have already abandoned the business, since the outbreak.

Health and environmental officials from the state and their federal counterparts, as well as international organizations have started flocking the village, trying to remedy the situation.

Other problems caused by mining activities in Dogon Daji are neither health nor environmental issues; they touch on the economy. Since the discovery of gold has become an easy source of riches, it attracted able-bodied young men and took them away from the farm.

For this reason, the representative of the village head told Weekly Trust that the community is now being hit by “food shortage”. He said: “our youths did not farm this year because they were into mining,” adding “it is a sad development.”

It was gathered that the problem of young men abandoning farming does not stop at only Dogon Daji, as the same scenario is playing out in Bagega, Dareta, Yar Galma and even Lingyado and Bindin villages, were mining has become the major preoccupation of the populace.

Slow and expensive remediation

Since the eruption of the epidemic last year, it has killed about 1,000 children and deformed hundreds others, according to the state governor, Alhaji Abdul’aziz Yari Abubakar. However, the cleaning of lead contaminated villages has been very slow in the state, even though the exercise was successfully carried out in Dareta and Abare.

About N26 billion is required to decontaminate the affected villages and establish research and enlightenment centres that will provide treatment and measures for eradicating the disease, disclosed Governor Yari at the flagging off ceremony for the remediation project in Bagega.

The governor added that the United States has indicated it willingness to provide 45 per cent of the fund, while the state and federal governments will provide 55 per cent, saying he has started discussing the issue with President Goodluck Jonathan.

While the remediation is still far from completion, illegal mining is yet to be stopped around the affected villages. Just few metres from where the governor inspected a site where the scraped contaminated soil from Bagega is being sand-filled, some foreigners claiming to be citizens of Niger Republic have set up a processing camp.

All attempts to speak with the expatriate miners failed as none of them speaks English nor the local dialect. Nonetheless, gathered from reliable source that the men were not licensed to mine minerals in Nigeria.

Meanwhile,  the Zamfara State Commissioner for  Environment, Alhaji Mukhtari Lugga, said the state government was not aware of the presence of the illegal expatriate minersand promised to report them to the police.

The state governor, however, has ruled out the possibility of ending illegal mining in Zamfara, when he noted, while addressing newsmen last week, that resorting to such a measure will be unfair to the miners, especially when no job substitute would be provided to them.

Goveror Yari further noted that the state has an estimated 12,000 illegal mining sites, arguing that it will be difficult for both the state and the federal governments to stop the activity even through the use of force.

The state government is also suggesting a review of the present policy for issuing mining licenses, which is in the exclusive list of the Federal Government, to create room for states to input on modalities of mineral explorations in their states, with a view to addressing ills associated with the business.

The state Commissioner for Information, Alhaji Ibrahim Muhammad Birnin-Magaji, observed that states need to be given regulatory roles on mining companies operating on their territories in order for them to ensure that such firms are complying with their corporate social responsibility obligations.

Presently, he said: “they (the firms) don’t build hospitals, schools or roads for host communities as  it is being done by multinational oil companies for people in the Niger Delta Region, for instance.”

He said host communities are angry at what they consider as “exploitative attitude” by the companies, adding “they feel like their wealth is being taken out of their lands for the benefit of others and with nothing to show for it on their lives.”

The commissioner stressed that the only way out of the debacle and cases of lead poisoning is for the state government to have powers to control licensed mining companies. “With that in place, we can have a viable avenue of job creation and reduction of poverty, which will is line with the Federal Government’s policy on jobs, as well as end the problem of lead poisoning,” he said.