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Innocent Asuquo, Cross River National Park
By Akpan David, Calabar
A senior official of Cross River National Park, Innocent Asuquo has exclaimed that there is unrestrained illegal mining all over the facility.
Asuquo represented the state conservation controller, Caroline Olory at the second multi-stakeholders conference on deforestation in Calabar, organized by ‘We The People’, an environmental and forests group.
Asuquo said that the Cross River National Park needs help from sister security agencies to contain the illegal miners who are always heavily armed.
“There’s prevalence of unrestrained illegal mining activities all over the National Parks in the State. Mining activities are not supposed to happen within the protected areas.
“They have devastated the parks as well as the buffer zones. This has also led to wanton wood logging by illegal timber dealers.
“There are well over 200 of these miners in the National Parks, many of them claimed to have been licensed by the Federal Ministry of Mines and Steel.
“They are potential risks. This is because they have caches of arms, and do threaten personnel of the National Parks as well as community leaders. They could also be sources of armed robbery and banditry. This is why we strongly appeal for collaboration with the sister security agencies who are well armed than us because we cannot do it alone.”
Asuquo alleged that there have been instances where the illegal miners and their armed thugs abducted women into the forests and raped them.
He alleged further that the eight years of former Governor Ben Ayade did not pay attention to forest security, which reason illegal mining and wood logging thrived to the detriment of the state.
“Suspected criminals were able to penetrate the Cross River National Park and also plundered other forests in the state in the past eight years because former administration did not care about safeguarding the forests”, he said.
Reacting to reported activities of illegal miners in parts of the state, yesterday Governor Bassey Otu in a swift response to the reported illegal mining activities yesterday announced the appointment of a 33-man Taskforce to oversee and stem the crime.
The taskforce is headed by Engineer Ukam Ngwu Ngwu with Mr Charles Ushie as Secretary.
