Cows cross polluted parts of the Orson River in southwest Nigeria
ELISHA, Nigeria — In his early twenties, Simeon Abolarinwa made his first CV as an adult. At the bottom of the document, he lists his hobbies: hunting, hiking, and fishing. Unlike many of his peers who do the same thing to fill space or elevate their image, these are actually his hobbies.
Growing up in his native Orsun State in southwestern Nigeria, he often sneaked out of his home, making hooks out of bound wires and going fishing in nearby streams with friends.
Today, the 41-year-old lives in ossob, the state capital, and works as a network administrator at a university. His favorite place to fish is a spot on the Orson River, less than a kilometer (half a mile) from his apartment and a few kilometres from the SACRED WOODS OF ORSOBO, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The gateway to the sacred grove of Ossun Osobo, a UNESCO World Heritage Site
"I have this personal connection to the Orson River," Abolarinwa told Al Jazeera. "If it wasn't for the Orson River, where would I practice my hobby?"
He also went to groves where fishing was not allowed, played with monkeys and watched wildlife. During the lockdown, he started going rock climbing where to fish, or just sit back and enjoy nature. "I had a lecturer friend in college, an ornithologist, and I would go bird watching with him," he said.
Sometimes he went fishing alone, sometimes with a group of fishing enthusiasts. Sometimes, they simply admire their catch and release it back into the river, but most of the time, they catch food.
In his Twitter profile, the fixed tweet was a photo of him excitedly grilling fish over an open fire, a new pastime for someone who didn't like eating fresh fish as a kid.
Orissa and other yoruba spiritual symbols are carved in the sacred woods of Osson Osobo
All of this makes Abola Linwa a bit like a fishing book. He knew that elephant fish were too soft to boil, but it was best smoked, and fishing during the rainy season was dangerous because the water level rose.
He learned that October/November is the beginning of the dry season, the fishing season, as fish breed when the water level rises, "depending on the fish, within three months, they can be caught".
On a fishing trip near the end of the 2019 rainy season, he found the water cloudy. He blamed it on flooding because rainwater obscured everything — unlike in the dry season, where you can see the bottom of the river on the shoals.
"During the rainy season, this color is normal because all the runoff goes into the water," Abolarinwa told Al Jazeera. The dry season is coming, but the water remains the same. Eventually, they began to see dead fish floating on the surface of the water.
"We think it's a temporary thing, maybe someone throws chemicals into the tributaries along the way and the fish die and float down," he said. "[But] things get worse in 2020. Water is like tea, in the middle of the dry season.
Fishermen and farmers encountered in Abola Linwa who were irrigating with water wondered: Had someone poisoned the water? Why do we see so many dead fish?
Fate disturbs faith
One of Orson's female worshippers travels to the polluted section of the river in the sacred woods of Osogbo, the state capital, to pray to the goddess
Unbeknownst to Abolarinwa's friends at the time, two years ago, mining company Segilola Resources Operating Limited (SROL) was acquired by a Canadian company and began large-scale exploration in the Osun area.
Today, it operates Nigeria's only large commercial gold mine, although the area has always been filled with many artisanal miners.
In fact, Orson's story is about faith, migration, and exploration, as well as about the elements of marriage that remain single for a long time. Many people from inside and outside Nigeria come to the state because they believe in passing through this land or something beneath it.
In August, thousands of people from across Nigeria and the black diaspora, including Cuba, Brazil and Trinidad and Tobago, visited the Osun-Osogbo woods for a two-week annual festival. As is customary, many people buy small buckets of river water there and take it to their homes around the world.
In Yoruba cosmology, Orson, the goddess of love and sex, is one of several Orissa or gods. In global pop culture, she was adored — and mentioned by celebrities like Dianne Reeves and Jennifer Lopez.
American singer Beyoncé, who described herself as a goddess on her 2016 album Lemonade, announced her pregnancy a year later, dressed in iconic gold-colored photographs associated with Orsun.
The part of the river that flows through the Orson Woods, a 400-year-old natural habitat, is believed to have the power of pregnancy and universal healing. Largely due to the efforts of austrian-Nigerian artist Susanne Wenger, the forest was declared a National Monument in 1965 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005.
The river — named after the goddess and considered her home — is named after Osun, one of Nigeria's 36 states. It spans 213 kilometers (132 miles) and flows through five states in southwestern Nigeria, including Oyo, Ekiti, Ogun and Lagos, where it enters the lagoon and pours into the Atlantic Ocean.
In these states, people, including farmers, use their water for different purposes. Several dams also pass through it, including one that supplies water to two major breweries in these states.
But Osun is also particularly attractive for its rich mineral resources. From cassiterite, niobium and tourmaline to mica, marble, and the most valuable gold.
For centuries, gods, gold and other minerals coexisted peacefully.
In the 1970s, the oil boom led to crude oil becoming Nigeria's largest source of income. Prior to that, the government was involved in mining, but in the years since then, many sites have been abandoned and mining has become mainly the domain of artisanal miners.
In 1945, alluvial gold was first discovered in the Iberindo Reef area, 60 km (37 mi) from Osobo. Small-scale mining began there, and by the 1980s, the former Nigerian Mining Corporation (NMC) had established the first industrial mining there. Later, Tropical Mining Limited (TML) acquired the project, and NMC retained a 20% interest.
By 2007, when Nigerian authorities deregulated the sector, TML gave birth to the Segilola Gold Project, which operates in parts of Orson State, including Iperindo. Within a decade, Thor Explorations Limited, a company listed on the Canadian Stock Exchange, entered the Segilola Gold Project through the acquisition of TML-backed SROL. This gave it control of the mining lease ML41 (approximately 27 square kilometers or 10.4 square miles), exploration license EL19066 and two other exploration licenses for the Ilesha30 community.
According to one of its representatives, Ijeoma Ohaeri Koleso, the new owner began exploration in 2017, "exceeding regulatory requirements" during the mining process. It uses tailings storage dams to store its waste and said "frequent environmental compliance monitoring is done by accredited third parties and witnessed by regulators."
Still, no one knows if the company followed due process during the exploration process, aides to Kayode Fayemi, who was minister of solid minerals at the time, told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity. Incumbent ministry officials declined to comment on the matter.
At the time, multiple artisanal miners and other small-scale miners were also mining across the state.
Al Jazeera spoke with some staff at the National Museum, Osogbo, which is home to groves, but declined to comment, insisting Abuja had issued instructions not to talk about the situation.
One of them, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Al Jazeera that authorities feared the forest had been removed from UNESCO and that they expected water to return to normal soon.
"Do you know what it means?"
Artisanal miners work at a location in Elisha, Orsun State
"In Orson, pollution is through water that flows through communities of more than 2 million people," Anthony Adejuwon, head of Urban Alert, an Osobo-based civic advocacy group, told Al Jazeera.
"If Baggega can record [hundreds] deaths with a population of 7,000, then imagine the number of children who will die in the next five years, with a population of 2 million." In our projections, the number of casualties between now and 2027 is about 100,000. In Bagega, it's just lead poisoning. Here we have mercury, cyanide and lead.
In 2011, an estimated 400 children died of lead poisoning in the Bagega community in Zanfala state, and thousands more were found to have excessive levels of lead in their blood.
The city alert said its casualty predictions extend to those who fetch water home from groves, as well as the Caribbean Sea and parts of South America, Central America and North America. It also said it asked for an annual visitor log for the grove, but was told there was no data.
"Even those who didn't come here in person were drinking water. Either they drink or rub it on their head or on their skin," Adejuwan said.
Belonging to SROL's signboard, the company operates a gold mine in Iberindo, Osun, Nigeria's only commercial-scale gold mine
Independent physico-chemical tests of water samples from the area by City Alert and Al Jazeera showed the presence of high levels of heavy metals.
In both tests, the water content of arsenic and mercury – priority chemical pollutants according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Nigerian Industrial Standards (NIS) – were 850% and 2,000% higher than permissible levels, respectively.
In Urban Alert's lead tests at four Osun sites, the results ranged from 1,000 percent (above the limit) in the woods to 2,000 percent in Ede near another dam.
The Al Jazeera sample was taken near the Iberindo market, just about a kilometer (half a mile) from Segilola's exploration area.
"Farmers feed vegetables, corn, etc. with water," Adejuwang said. "There is something in plants called foliar feeding; It means a way to use leaves to absorb nutrients from plants. These plants absorb nutrients from the water splashed on the leaves.
"Just looking into the future, can you imagine the amount of cyanide, lead and mercury in everyone's body?" He said.
"Think of fish caught in the water; They dried it and sold it in the market, and we all ate this fish. Even drinking in cow's water, do you know the meaning? ”
Another Al Jazeera test confirmed that water in the woods was discolored due to high iron levels. "Water should be colorless, which is the minimum requirement for restrictions according to unannounced recommendations," said Tosin Agunbiade, a health, safety and environmental expert in Lagos.
Nkem Torimiro, senior lecturer in microbiology at Obafemi Awolowo University at Ile-Ife, said people living along the Orson River — and their unborn children — are at risk of developing neurological diseases.
"Children exposed to high levels of lead may suffer from behavioral disorders, learning disabilities and low IQs — which are irreversible," she added.
"For arsenic, it's a precursor to cancer," she said, noting that the effects will be long-term, not immediate. "About five years of exposure to arsenic can lead to cancer. It is associated with infant mortality and can lead to a drop in children's IQ. It can also affect the fetus, especially when pregnant women are exposed to [contamination].
Law and chaos
The polluted Orson River meets one of its tributaries, the still-clean Erinle River, at the confluence of Ede in Osun State
No one knows exactly whose mining activities are causing the river pollution.
Urban Alert conducted a spatial analysis and found that water flowed from a river source in the community of Igaede-Ekiti in neighboring Ekiti State, and in the Esa-Odo community of Osun, small-scale miners were working and the clear water turned brown.
There are two main types of mining: cores and alluvial layers. In core mining, industrial equipment penetrates deep into the core, while alluvial mining is mainly done by craftsmen and focuses on small deposits transported along the river.
"Gold deposits are like hearts — blood is pumped from the heart to the veins," Urban Alert's Adejuwon told Al Jazeera. "The alluvial layer is like a vein of ore, and the core is where [like] a mine like Segilola is working.
Artisanal mining is more common in Nigeria. Craftsmen use light equipment such as shovels and focus on alluvial deposits, but with the support of smaller companies, other craftsmen use heavier equipment, including excavators. In Orson, residents pointed to Chinese supporters who operate in an atmosphere of secrecy and employ armed security guards.
On the course of the river and its tributaries, there are several mining sites.
Craftsmen relied on the runoff water in the river, dug into the riverbed, and scattered the water in all directions to find gold while washing the mud, so the residue would enter the river. After exploration, the holes remained open, causing the pond to be infested with algae scattered throughout the southwest. Sometimes people fall into these holes, and these holes can be very deep.
But experts say the continued mass pollution is not caused by artisans, who rely on hand tools and can't afford the heavy equipment of large enterprises.
The mining industry remains controlled by the federal government as part of a constitutionally defined "list of exclusive powers," though it has loosened its grip on the sector to allow more control by state governments.
To obtain a commercial license, approval from the federal authorities must be obtained - the Mining Cadastral Office and the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development. Typically, the licence covers a large exploration area and a smaller boundary for mining.
In 2018, Omoniyi Temitope, then Iberindo's Community Liaison Officer, met with SROL as its representatives worked with the three host communities to develop a Community Development Agreement (CDA) under the Mining Act of 2007.
In September 2021, Segilola heard that some artisanal miners had opened up a large area of land in the licensed mining and exploration area in Ypelindo to mine gold.
Just a stone's throw from the site is a bustling market and a stream where the community relies for household chores. This stream is a tributary of the Opa River – which eventually drains into the Orson River.
A young boy and a young girl search for gold grains in a small mining area in Ypelindo, Orsun
Temitope said the miners are community residents, some of whom are part of Segilola's CDA. They formed a new organization in April 2021 with a different mission: small-scale mining. By September, their self-proclaimed Iberindo Miners' Artisanal Cooperative began working with illegal miners in the Segilola licensed area.
"When they notified me, I told them... Mining in someone's ME or EL (mining licence or exploration licence) area is unacceptable and is not permitted by law. They think that if I don't support them, they're going to force it," he said.
Segilola acknowledges that there have been more than one incident of prospecting by other parties in the area covered by its exploration licence. But its representatives have repeatedly refused to provide any details about them.
Representatives of the company showed Al Jazeera copies of letters written to the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development, the Ministry of the Environment and state authorities reporting manual activities and attempting to use law enforcement to deport them.
"Under the law, we are required to report this matter to the Ministry of Mines and Steel," a legal representative of Segilola told Al Jazeera.
"But as a company, we can't say we're going out there to stop it or do anything — we're not allowed to do that under the law." If you go to ministry, there is an agreement. If the ministry hears you do this, the hunter becomes the one being hunted.
During the Al Jazeera visit, miners worked on the site and even worked in areas where the state-backed Joint Task Force (JTF) was maintaining policing.
Civil society groups say the company has been focused on removing large entities that encroach on its site, but has been slow to evacuate smaller entities.
In May, two small companies that allegedly sponsored illegal mining took an excavator to mine on a large scale. Segilola said it reported the situation to the state government and the machine was removed.
Crime and Punishment
Artisanal miners work at a location in Orson State
According to the Nigerian Senate, $9 billion is lost annually due to illegal mining and gold smuggling. Community members said the elite patrons involved in the mining were not affected in any way.
In September 2021, Nigeria's Junior Minister for Mines and Steel, Uchue Ogah, called for the death penalty for illegal mining, saying at a Senate forum that the perpetrators often conspired with security officials to illegally mine across Nigeria.
Adejuwon said Nigeria's Minerals and Mining Regulations of 2011 provided for multiple fines for offenders, but "the problem is enforcement".
In May 2020, the Orson administration arrested 27 people suspected of illegal mining, more than half of whom were Chinese. Al Jazeera tried to contact some Chinese companies registered in the state to solicit comments on their operations, but did not respond.
In April 2021, Orson Governor Gboyeja Oyetola formed a nine-member committee to address illegal mining in the state. Al Jazeera tried to contact one of them — Abimbola Oyediran, a federal mining official and a representative of the Federal Department of Mines and Steel Development of Orson State. But he did not respond to phone calls and text messages.
Last September, federal politicians also set up a commission to investigate Orson's illegal gold mining, but so far nothing has been found. In August, the national environmental standards and regulation enforcement agency said it was investigating the pollution of rivers.
For now, artisanal mining continues, even near orson's homes and markets. According to residents of a town, Atrin-Ijesa, according to a town of Atrin-Ijesa, according to some communities, the presence of competing groups led to the proliferation of firearms.
In April 2019, Zamfara banned artisanal mining as authorities sought to curb banditry and other insecurity surrounding the practice. Many artisanal miners began to migrate to the southwest to earn a living in artisanal mining.
One of them, a 38-year-old breadwinner, returned to Gusau, the capital of Zamfara, with two wives and eight children, anonymously telling Al Jazeera that he had moved away shortly after the ban was issued. He then called home to call male relatives and friends and asked him to join him, just as another friend called him.
"This is our church, this is our mosque"
Osunyemi Efunsola has been the chief priestess of Busan In for the past 25 years
Ahead of this year's Orson Festival, the town's traditional ruler, Ataoja of Osoboo, worked to get Orson worshippers to stop drinking. On March 30, after a stakeholder meeting in the grove, an eight-point communiqué was issued, attended by Ataoja's representative, his olori (wife).
In June, an Orson government spokesman said authorities were discussing clearing the river with an environmental adviser. Earlier this month, the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Executive Board (NESRA) said it was investigating the matter.
But civil society organizations like City Alert say the federal government and the international community must intervene as in the Bagega incident to prevent further complication in the culture and lives of people living by the river.
Other experts say the root cause of pollution, regardless of the outcome, must be addressed: illegal mining. "If you're trying to clean up, but the main source of these problems continues — then we're wasting our time," Torimiro said. "Now alleviating while the problem is still there is like pouring water into a basket.
A believer in the Wusun faith, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Al Jazeera that she hoped Wenger, who died in 2009, would still be alive so that her profile would draw international attention to the situation.
At this month's Osun-Osogbo Festival, she and her admirers are numerous, wearing yellow and gold costumes and beads around their necks, wrists and ankles. They were hopeful about miracles, but still believed in the enduring power of the river as they prayed and sang in the woods.
"Please help tell the government to stop gold diggers or find procedures that don't affect the color of the water," said Osunyemi Efunsola, who has been the chief priestess of Osun's companion, The God Busan in, for the past 25 years. "The people went to the Jordan River in Jerusalem, took their holy water, and also went to Mecca. This is our church, this is our mosque.
"We have nowhere else to go," the 72-year-old told Al Jazeera while looking sadly at the brown water that ran through the woods. "Ossun is a mother, so she's still tolerant of them (the perpetrators), but if she's ready, she can cut down an iroko tree with a needle." They should stop this action before the day they regret being born.
Abolarinwa's fisherman friends — locals and some immigrants from northern Nigeria to fishing and artisanal mining opportunities — first told him that gold mining was the cause of the pollution.
Like fish, they disappeared.
Other residents say 2019 is the last season in which people can catch a lot of fish.
"They haven't been back for two years because there are no more fish," he told Al Jazeera. "If it weren't for our connection to the water, we wouldn't be coming back.
Abolarinwa said the first sign of how bad things are is when the tilapia disappears completely, and only catfish, the "toughest", can be seen in the water. These days, he doesn't take all his fishing rods to fish because he's not sure if he's caught any fish.
Sometimes, he would even put the bait back into the soil where he found them, allowing them to live and die in another life.