‘Married women abandon husbands for illegal miners’ 
Operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Kaduna Zonal Directorate, at the weekend, arrested 31 suspected illegal miners in Jos, Plateau State.
  
They were apprehended within the premises of Jiasheng Nigeria Limited, located at Dura Rayfield, Mangu Road, Jos following credible intelligence linking the company to illegal mining activities in the state.
  
The suspects included four Chinese and 27 Nigerians, part of whom were suppliers in possession of unprocessed solid minerals, believed to have been illegally mined.
  
They include Liang Qinyong; Wang Huajie; Zhong Jiajing; Long Kechong; Akilu Akonimi; Umar Mohammed; Aaron Davo; Auwal Abdullahi; Haruna Umar; Prosper Goddey; Alex Long; Mathew Onmaza; Oupe Anzaku; Samson Luka; John Nwang, and Saidu Mohammed.
 
They rest are Mohammed Musa; Abubakar Ibrahim; Mohammed Zaradeen; Yakubu Adidzi; Isah Dahiru; Yusuf Musa; Benjamin .D. Dalop; Ibrahim Wakili; Adam Muhammed; Abubakar Ahmed Muazu; Murtala Abubakar; Peter Yakubu; Ibrahim Musa; Monday Christopher, and Billard Musa.
  
Items recovered from the premises included a truckload with eight bags of processed Monazite, weighing 1000kg, and worth N4 million each.
  
EFCC spokesperson, Dele Oyewale, said they would be charged to court as soon as investigations are concluded. 
RELATEDLY, the Commissioner for Housing and Urban Development, Sylvanus Dongtoe, has appealed to citizens to support the state’s government’s suspension of mining activities on the Plateau until the repositioning of the subsector for coordinated operations.
  
He said the indiscriminate mining was breeding social vices that should stop.
 
 Dongtoe, who spoke in Jos when he received the leadership of the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), led by its Chairman, Polycarp Auta, also lamented that apart from the large-scale environmental degradation, many students have abandoned schools to engage in the illicit activities.

He said: “This issue of mining, I want to use this opportunity also to appeal to you. The intention of the government is not to punish any person. It’s not to subject the citizen of the state to hardship, but rather, to reposition the state such that it would be a place that is envied, where people come in for legitimate activities.
  
The commissioner alluded to a situation where married women were abandoning their spouses for illegal miners.