The Asiwaju of Ilesa, Olayinka Fasuyi, has revealed that the creation of the Ijesha Mineral Resources Development Forum (IMRDF) has curbed illegal mining in Ijeshaland, stating that the situation would have been far worse without its intervention.
Speaking at the 45th edition of The Frontliners organised by the League of Veteran Journalists in Osogbo on Monday, Fasuyi noted that illegal mining has reduced drastically through the IMRDF’s continued advocacy and sensitisation.
He stressed that over the past five years, IMRDF has been actively engaging local communities and the state government, raising awareness about the dangers of unregulated mining activities and their environmental impact.
According to him, “Along the line, we notice that people started migrating from farming to mining and along this same line, we observed that the illegal mining activities have started popping up with devastating environmental implications.
“And that gave birth to the Ijesha Mineral Resources Development Forum, IMRDF, and in the past 5 years has been going around communities in Ijesha, and sensitizing people at our expense without taking a dime from any government all of this just to ensure that things are better.
“Things would have been worse today if not for the intervention of IMRDF, so we keep calling, we have made several visits to the state government, going around the communities and educating them.”
Meanwhile, while reacting to the resent influx of Iswap terriost in the community, Fasuyi emphasized that community security is a collective responsibility of membersof the society, stressing that the local authorities and traditional leaders have been engaged to proffer a lasting solution.
He explained that, “This is the role of every member of the community, we have a quite a number of good proposal but at the appropriate time we’ll share them with the local government authorities who has been mandated to fix this.
“Already we are talking to the traditional rulers on why they should improve security at there various communities in their own little way.
“We have a blue print on how to respond to this but being a security matter permit me to keep this under the rap for you.”
