Over two months after a mining pit collapsed in Shiroro, Niger State, burying an estimated 50 miners alive, families and relatives of the victims have threatened legal action against the owners of the pit and the state government.
The actual number of victims buried in the collapsed pit became a topic of controversy after the authorities said there were 14 miners buried inside the pit while other stakeholders said over 50 miners were affected.
Efforts to recover the remains of the miners from the pit, estimated to be over 400 Square metres deep, proved futile for several weeks as the rescue attempts only succeeded in retrieving dismembered part of the corpses.
A relation of one of the dead miners, Suleiman Isah, told newsmen that 14 miners were buried in the pit out of which nine corpses had been retrieved and buried while the remaining five had yet to be recovered.
Isah said the firm that owns the collapsed pit had promised compensation for the families of the victims.
“This accident affected one of my brothers. I will just say my blood brother. He was one of my blood brothers. For now, they have already buried nine people and we are still expecting five people from the pit. We have not heard anything from either the company or the state government.
“The day before yesterday was exactly two months since the incident happened in Niger and we have neither heard from the state government nor the company that owns the mining pit.
“We expect them to pay compensation, that is what they should do. We are hearing from some people that the company is going to do something but they are trying to remove those corpses that are remaining in the pit.
“After they have removed them, they are going to compensate us and that is why we are just holding on for now. So, after the five people remaining are removed they will do something. Up til now five people are in the pit including the chief security officer.
“The people buried in the pit were 14, including the chief security officer of the company. I can’t say there is no plan of taking them to court, the plan is there but we are waiting for them. They are still expecting five people from the pit.
“After they have recovered the five corpses and buried and they still don’t do anything, we will definitely drag them to court; we know we will find justice in the court,” Isah said.
Families of the victims had blamed the tragedy on the failure of the state and federal governments as well as the firm that owned the pit to get help or secure more sophisticated machinery to rescue the trapped miners. They accused the governments of depending on obsolete tools and crude manual labour to excavate the rocks and rescue the victims or even their remains.
According to them, several cries for help were sent out to the authorities to save the trapped miners but none came until it was too late.
They said if only the government had sought help from foreign agencies with more sophisticated machinery, perhaps some, if not all the victims, could have been rescued.
A member of one of the families, Abdusalami Kuta, said his younger brother, Isiayku Kuta, was among those buried under the rock and asked the government to recover his remains.
“This government has not been fair to us. We have been praying and hoping that the government would be able to rescue our brother and others who are buried under the earth. Sadly, they could not at this time and now we believe that they will never be found again.
“The government can now mobilise equipment to excavate them so we can give them a proper burial. We will leave everything to Allah. The company that engaged them to do this type of risky job must compensate the families left behind. The government must ensure this. They cannot die just like that,” Kuta said.
In this article
