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From Wilson Okereke, Afikpo
Consolidated Quarry Owners Association in Ebonyi State, has stopped operation following the alleged arrest of its Chairman, Chief Chikaodiri Ojimba.
Ojimba was reportedly arrested on Saturday by the police on the instruction of an Agent Company over his refusal to remit the government money into a private account.
Spokesman of the group, Mbam Sunday, disclosed that they were not ready to function until their chairman was released unhurt.
According to him, their interest is to support Governor Francis Nwifuru achieve his heart desire of lifting the state out of poverty, and as such, will not allow any individual to defraud the state of its generated revenue from the mining sites.
Another quarry dealer, Emeka Nwodom, who decried the unlawful arrest and detention of their chairman, called on Governor Nwifuru to intervene and facilitate his release.
Nwodom insisted that they will never allow imposition of agents in their mining sites.
“Quarry is solid mineral in the Exclusive List of federal government and as such, we cannot accept any imposition of agents.
“Our Chairman called us for a meeting and there, we resolved that we shall not by any means, pay our money to any individual account but government account only, so that our government will get exactly the amount of money generated from the mining sites but regrettably, on Saturday, we heard that our Chairman was arrested by the Agent Company that has been forcing themselves on us maybe because it is owned by a highly placed person in the southeast, they want to intimidate us.
“I want to assure these people to be ready to arrest more of us because we from Ebonyi are ready to sacrifice everything to see that our State money is not transferred to any personal account.
“As you can see, we are not operating today because we don’t know the whereabouts of our Chairman, if he is alive or not and we shall not operate until we see our him,” he said.
Efforts to reach the alleged agent company was not fruitful.
But, Special Assistant to Governor on Solid Minerals, Chief David Ajah, urged the quarry dealers to be calm promising that the governor will attend to their problem.
“Whoever that arrested their Chairman will release him because our Governor is not a crisis Governor. I want to urge them to embrace dialogue to settle the crisis than shutting down the business operation which will affect the economy of the State,” the governor’s aide said.
