Now that Bauchi State has hit gold – Punch Newspapers

Greg Odogwu

[email protected] 08063601665

Now that Bauchi State has officially confirmed the discovery of gold in the state, let her not start salivating for the cash that is about to drop into her coffers, but should get ready to effectively tackle the health and environmental challenges that will come with it. This is very important because when the gold boom hit Zamfara State, we lost more than 400 children. The same with Niger State, where we lost 30 children.

And for the economy, the new gold state may just become a syphon to suck away the country’s natural resources. Nigeria steadily loses billions of dollars in revenue through illegal mining. The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative recently released its report which made it clear that in 2014 and 2015, we lost $9bn to illegal mining operations, particularly from illegal gold exportation. So, Bauchi’s…