Kogi Coal Deposits: Illegal Miners and Fifth Columnists Undermining Odagbo’s Development Aspirations

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Can the villagers of Odagbo have peaceful sleep because of the huge commercial deposit of coal under the belly of their ancestral land? Fifth columnists would not allow that. Odagbo is in Ojoku District of Ankpa Local Government Area in Kogi State. According to the accounts of elders of the village, the solid mineral was discovered there in 1957, but mining of the product only commenced a decade later.

Of course, it is a thing of joy that nature brought our forefathers here after migrating from Ibagele, the root of Ojoku. Odagbo villagers are even more pleased because in their thinking the presence of coal under their land would engender development for the area and its people. That has however , remained a dream.

Due to mining of coal in Odagbo for the past 49 years, it has been tales of woe by the villagers as the activities of the government, especially at the federal level via the liquidated Nigeria Coal Corporation (NCC), illegal miners and fifth columnists had undermined the development aspiration of the area and its people.
The NCC, that was legally mandated to mine coal in Odagbo,  truly is defunct, but illegal miners, among them some few indigenes of Odagbo,  are still having a field day unchallenged, destroying the ecosystem.
As the villagers have always been, and still are disposed to the continuous mining of the solid mineral, they expressed happiness when news filtered to them the federal government is contemplating using the coal there to generate electricity, an essential social service commodity that has eluded Odagbo for decades. But while they await the coming of that plan to practical fruition, some scrupulous elements may have resumed some diabolical plot to once more short change the Federal and Kogi State Government as well as Ankpa LG of funds in royalties.
For now, the villagers do not know of the plot, but somehow the leaders of Odagbo had had their innocence exploited and made to sign certain documents on Odagbo coal. Because the whole thing is clandestine, there was no input from the villagers. Consequently,  the signing of the said document was not to the knowledge and approval of right thinking majority members of the village. As they are not privy to the draft of document, the villagers are in the dark on it s content and what all it is about.
The villagers are uncomfortable with the signing of these documents by their leaders, given previous experiences of neglect of Odagbo in terms of infrastructural provisions such as roads, electricity, potable water, functional health and educational facilities. The kind of neglect Odagbo has suffered over time makes one wants to think if there is government in place at all. It still beats the imagination of the Odabgo villagers how a road project conceived with theirs inclusive, is left out during execution.
While we welcome government’s intention to make judicious use of the Odagbo coal through any genuine means including private sector involvement, we want to make it clear that the people are in no way part of the said signed documents. The villagers are united in the fact that they have nothing to do with that document, and whoever appended signature on it does so at his or her own volition. We have stated it before, and we are repeating here that unlike 1967, today we have what it takes to determine our path to community development.  So any institution interested in exploiting and exploring the coal should work with the host community, please. We hope we have made our case clear.
– Zainab Baba’Eakpa, Odagbo-Ojoku, Ankpa LGA.

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