Governor Seyi Makinde might continue to play his populist card as much as he likes by showing faux concern about the blast which occurred on Tuesday. But, the truth remains that, taking a critical look at the aerial view of the location which is now in public space, one will understand that there is more to the story than meets the eyes.
It is really embarrassing that the State Governor could publicly declare upon showing up at the scene less than 3hrs after the blast that the likelihood for the explosion was instigated by dynamites stored at the location. The question now is, when was the preliminary investigation conducted before the Governor made such a high-level statement?
Probably the Governor is not in the know and he has assumed that he is talking to an uneducated and uninformed population, dynamite will not explode on its own because it has two types of layers cap (first and second layers) with a control around its cap which must be activated. Once there’s no activation, there can never be an explosion.
Also, if the dynamite were to have exploded from the structure (without being planted) as the Governor wants us to believe, a crater would not have sufficed at the centre of where the explosion occured. The only explanation for it is that the ground was digged before the explosive was inserted into the ground. In fact, there is a kind of shock wave which will cause the ground to shake as much as was witnessed yesterday.
The claim of the Governor is quite hilarious and shows culpability. By now, the Governor should even be undergoing serious investigation for that statement.
There have been series of investigative reports by journalists alleging activities of illegal miners in the State, what has the Governor done to rein in? At least, the Governor won’t tell us that as the Chief Security Officer of the State, he is not aware of the activities of illegal miners in the State. How many arrests has been made? How many prosecution has been done? As much as I know, there is no illegal mining that occurs without the knowledge of the Governor not even when media reports have captured such severally.
The Governor should not even try to control the narrative. Rather, he should allow law enforcement agencies to do their work. The barons involved in illegal mining in the State must be arrested and prosecuted (both local and foreign) and the production site closed. All the perpetrators must be identified in order to stamp out illegal mining in the State because it is very dangerous. One of its evil is that it fuel banditry and terrorism and creates widespread criminality. Oyo State has a lot to deal with already. Meanwhile, Yorubas have captured it well enough when they declared that Ọ̀run ń yabọ̀ kìí ṣọ̀rọ̀ ẹnìkan.
The Yorubas are intelligent when they declared that ká fi ẹ́nu á dákẹ́ kìí ṣe ọ̀rọ̀ omí gbóná. The explosion yesterday is beyond what anyone should trivialise or expect we the citizens not to probe further. And, I personally hold the view that the Governor declaring that it was a dynamite from the compound (which wasn’t triggered o) has already defeated whatever investigation to be conducted at that scene. If the Police should come up with a contrary report, a larger percentage of the people will not believe. It’s saddening.
Kazeem Olalekan Israel
Ìbàdàn, Nigeria.
