Onoja: We Must Cut Sources of Funding to Bandits, Terrorists to Deny Them Freedom of Action
Linus Aleke in Abuja
The Commander of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) Mining Marshals, ACC John Attah Onoja, said the government and other critical stakeholders in the fight against violent extremism must prioritise efforts to cut off sources of funding to terrorists and deny them the essential oxygen they need to continue terrorising innocent Nigerians.
He also vowed to sustain efforts to dismantle illegal mining cartels and disrupt illicit financing linked to banditry, kidnapping and terrorism.
Onoja made the commitment when members of the Defence Correspondents Association of Nigeria (DECAN) paid him a courtesy visit at his office in Abuja over the weekend.
He said the Mining Marshals would remain uncompromising in enforcing mining laws and restoring sanity to a sector whose activities have increasingly assumed security dimensions.
According to him, illegal mining is not only an economic and environmental threat but also a potential source of funding for criminal and terrorist groups.
“It is not necessarily about picking up weapons and fighting bandits or kidnappers. We must ask: how do the people in those forests feed? How do they get money?” he said.
Onoja said disrupting the illicit flow of funds to criminal groups would weaken their operational capacity and make banditry and terrorism less attractive.
“We want to make criminality less lucrative. You can only make it less lucrative if the illicit flow of finances to terrorist groups is disrupted,” he said.
He said the Mining Marshals had adopted intelligence-led operations involving the identification, arrest, investigation and prosecution of offenders to ensure that perpetrators were brought to justice.
Onoja said the operation would continue to maintain a presence across mining communities under its deterrence strategy, despite limitations in manpower and logistics.
He urged the media, particularly defence correspondents, to support the fight through accurate, responsible and sustained reporting on illegal mining and its security implications.
“I do not take your role for granted. The sanitised mining sector of our dream will be achieved through collaboration, and the major stakeholder in that collaboration is the media,” he said.
The commander also called on journalists to assess the performance of the Mining Marshals alongside the logistics available to the operation, saying inadequate resources remained a major constraint.
He, however, identified alleged collusion between some compromised officials and illegal miners as a major challenge threatening efforts to sanitise the sector.
“The major bottleneck we face today is not necessarily the number of illegal miners out there, but the number of compromised officials of institutions and agencies that are supposed to be partners in the fight against illegal mining,” he said.
Onoja alleged that some compromised officials had resorted to blackmail and petitions against the Mining Marshals in an attempt to frustrate their operations.
“That is corruption fighting back,” he said, stressing that the fight against illegal mining must be genuine, deliberate and enforced without bias or selectivity.
Responding, the President of DECAN, Sunday Odita, said the association recognised the critical security and economic implications of illegal mining and commended the Federal Government and the NSCDC for establishing the Mining Marshals.
He said illegal mining threatened the environment and national revenue and was increasingly becoming a national security concern, making effective collaboration among security agencies, the media and other stakeholders imperative.
Odita said defence correspondents remained committed to professional journalism, accuracy, fairness and the national interest in reporting security operations.
“As defence correspondents, we understand that effective security operations require not only the commitment of security agencies but also responsible and accurate public communication,” he said.
The Mining Marshals were launched on 21 March 2024 as a specialised NSCDC operation to combat illegal mining and protect Nigeria’s critical mineral resources.