Yobe: How 5 village girls were buried alive

It is not common in parts of Yobe State to see women, especially young girls, engaged in menial jobs such as mining minerals using crude and hazardous methods. What befell Mairo Maina Hassan aged 14, Zainab Bukar (15), Mairo Adamu Mohammed (7), Fatsuma Ba’aba (12) and Zainab Ibrahim (16) was traumatic just as it has […]

It is not common in parts of Yobe State to see women, especially young girls, engaged in menial jobs such as mining minerals using crude and hazardous methods. What befell Mairo Maina Hassan aged 14, Zainab Bukar (15), Mairo Adamu Mohammed (7), Fatsuma Ba’aba (12) and Zainab Ibrahim (16) was traumatic just as it has left the family in shock.

All of them were at home on vacation from their school located in Maluri, another village.Weekly Trust learnt that the girls were going to the mine in order to augment the income of their parents and save cash for school.

Turmin Bolawa is a village without any semblance of modernity with a population close to 5,000.

The road to Turmi is rugged, untarred and characterised by gullies, slopes and ponds.

 Witnesses said the tragedy occurred at noon after the girls had completed work in their family farms. “We went to farm very early in the money and worked, but Zainab said she wanted to go to the mines and get some gypsum which I did not object, because her little income do help a lot in sustaining the family,” Mallam Bukar, one of the bereaved parents said.

Saminu Ali, a resident of the village said the girls dug a large mining pit and entered it to remove the intention of removing the Gypsum but tragedy struck when large deposit of sand collapsed and buried them.

 Another witness, Malam Umar Mohammed said most of the men in town were at home because of Ramadan.

“It was much later that the rubble was cleared that the remains of the girls exhumed. The whole village was thrown into mourning”, Mohammed said.

Mallam Ba’aba who also lost a daughter in the accident said it took the villagers more than three hours to clear rubble to remove the remains of the girls.

Weekly Trust learnt that the village is located on top of a large deposit of gypsum but the God-given wealth did not in any way improve the lot of the people.

“We have only one primary school which is in a serious state of disrepair”, Maina Hassan, the district head said.

He recalled that though many residents of the village were not aware, similar calamity had befell the village about 20 years ago in which three married women were killed in the tunnel.

“That time, most of us were not aware of the economic importance of gypsum. We only grind and use it as paint while women used it as powder. It was much later that people began to troop in for it,” the district head said.  

Without access road and hospitals, on most occasions, cow-driven carts are used to convey patients or pregnant women to hospital from the village which does not have electricity or pipe-borne water.

Those looking for gypsum always short-change the villagers by buying the commodity at a give-away price of less than N100 per bucket. “A full 50 litre bucket containing gypsum goes for a paltry N70”, Malam Iliyasu, a man at the village, revealed.

He said it takes four to five hours to gather a bucket full of gypsum. “Apart from the difficulting in excavating the mineral, one has to carry it on his head from the mine to the village where buyers are waiting. The whole process is indeed very tedious”, he added.

Iliyasu also revealed that some “clever” people had long ago bought over a vast part of the minefield to the detriment of the villagers. “Long ago, some people came in a helicopter and showed us some papers claiming that a large reserve of the gypsum belongs to them. At present, we only get the mineral from our own site. It is very unfortunate because we were told that those people would come fully when government finally build access roads here,” he said.   

 Council chairman of Fika, Babayo Waziri acknowledged the predicament of the people whom he said are in serious need of help. He described the latest incident “as an act of God” and called on the parents of the girls to take heart.  “There is the need for parents to stop their children and wards from going to the mine field,” he warned.

Villagers said effort to check the five girls died in their abject poverty in the community.

Apart from farming, mining is one of the major occupation of Fika people whose communities have large deposits of gypsum, a raw material for making cement. The town itself shares borders with Ashaka the home of Ashaka Cement Factory in Gombe State.

Observers are of the opinion that harnessing the rich mineral potentials available around Fika would improve the lives of the people through provision of basic necessities of life.

For now, the people of Turmin Bolawa are still mourning the demise of their five daughters. Three of them were about to be married. “It is poverty that pushed my daughter to go to the mines. But I am consoled that she died while trying to get legitimate money,” Adamu Muhammad, one of the bereaved parents remarked.