Enimere Àkànbí
The Oyo State Government has launched a concerted effort to curb the menace of illegal activities on the corridor of Ibadan Circular Road Project.
Director General, Oyo State Miniral Development Agency, Mr. Abiodun Oni, revealed this to newsmen after examined extensive environmental degradation caused by the activities of illegal excavators.
After examining the road, from Egbeda to Lagelu area of the project, Mr. Oni, admitted that warnings by the monitoring team yielded positively, as no perpetrator was caught during the act.
The DG emphasized that fight against illegal mining will be relentless, with stern measures awaiting those who refuse to desist.
According to Mr. Oni, executive order signed by Governor Seyi Makinde in 2023 has empowered the state to take actions against environmental offenders.
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He lamented that the state government would spend a huge amount of public funds to repair the damaged caused on the land and the project.
Mr. Oni explained that “His Excellency, Governor Seyi Makinde, inspected the project area and discovered that illegal activities of mining was going on here, we pledged to find out and observe the extensive degradation that has happened to the environment.
Team from Ministry and agency came few days ago and met with people causing the havoc and gave them some warning. Thea warning is yielding some result, we’ve traveled for about 8.5km but no one was caught.
It’ll be a continuous exercise because illegal miners don’t give up easily, hope we can get it to stop, if they don’t we’ve to take action. Power over mining vest upon federal government but we as a state have our law that gave us room to be able to act. The Executive order the governor signed in 2023 takes care of some of those consequential response, we’ll make sure that we put them into action.
We’ve to get hold of these guys and enforce that law, and make sure that they don’t continue. It will cost a whole lot more to be able to fix the damaged land”He concluded.
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