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As seen in various parts of the world, many out-of-school kids, mostly boys, wander the dusty fields digging for gold. With a dirt plate in hand, all is in a bid to fill their starving bellies.
Nigerian children are being made sick from exposure to lead from illegal mining activities.
The scale of the problem in Zamfara state, Northeast Nigeria is huge.
Over 400 Nigerian children have died and thousands more have been severely poisoned by exposure to lead dust in this gold-mining region
In early 2010, while working in the impoverished rural region of Zamfara in northwestern Nigeria,
The group Médecins Sans Frontières — Doctors Without Borders — reports seeing many young children under age five suffering from fevers, seizures, and convulsions.
Zamfara had been experiencing a small-scale gold rush, thanks to rapidly rising gold prices that encouraged the search for more sources of ore. Mining work was taking place in and around the villages and within many of the mud-walled compounds where families were using flour mills to pulverize lead-laden rocks to extract gold.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) doctors sent children’s blood samples for testing and the results revealed acute lead poisoning. Many of the children had very high blood lead levels.
Small-scale mining and other industrial activities create lead contamination that afflicts children worldwide.
On September 3, 2023, Nigeria’s Minister of Solid Minerals, Dele Alake issued a 30-day ultimatum and threat to crack down on illegal artisanal miners.
Alake had said, “On the expiration of the period, the full weight of the law will fall on anyone seen on a mining site without a determinable status.”
This warning could not deter the Kid gold prospectors from their mining routine.
The underage children said their illegal mining of gold is not stopping anytime soon except the government attends to the current economic hardships in the country.
Source: Swifteradio.com
