Nigeria is too poor to keep the Osun River pure. Nigeria’s Osun River has, for many years, attracted people from far away as America to drink its pure waters. Beyoncé used the river as inspiration for her 2016 album Lemonade. She became Osun, the Yoruba goddess of fertility. However, the head of the National Commission for Museums and monuments, Abba Tijani, said that the illegal mining upstream on the river is due to poverty and social problems in Nigeria.
Illegal gold mining has turned the waters of the Osun River the colour of tea as you can see in the photograph. And the river has been flooded with lead, arsenic and mercury which is run off from clandestine mines. The levels of toxic chemicals are 10 times above the acceptable limit as set down by the World Health Organisation.
The river provides irrigation to many communities and their farms. Two million people live alongside the 165-mile Osun which flows into the Gulf of Guinea. It runs through the UNESCO world Heritage site, Osun-Osogbo at which there is a yearly festival which draws thousands of people from Nigeria and the African continent. Many of them bottle water direct from the river and take it home.
They have been warned by the local Yoruba palace to stop drinking the water. A non-profit organisation found that the lead levels were 10 times above permissible limits in the Grove and at a nearby dam they were 20 times above the limit. The non-profit, Urban Alert, claimed that as many as a hundred thousand people could die over the next five years if they drink the water.
It is clear that the water is toxic because fish are seen floating on the surface. Illegal gold mining cannot take place in the protected Grove but upriver there are dozens of them. There are allegations that the Chinese are implicated because in 2020, 27 miners were arrested of which more than half were Chinese.
A Canadian owned company is also involved although they state that their activities are monitored by a third party backed by a regulator.
The river is a World Heritage site granted in 2005 and there are concerns that it will be stripped of this accolade. Although, the listing does not specify that the water has to be healthy.
Clearly, not enough if anything at all is being done to stop illegal mining in Nigeria. This is not the first case of toxic chemicals polluting rivers and killing people. In 2011 an estimated 400 children died from lead poisoning in the Bagega community in Nigeria’s northern Zamfara state. This was also caused by illegal mining. That was lead poisoning but, in this instance, there is mercury, cyanide and lead poisoning.
Beyoncé has frequently cited Nigerian culture and identified with Osun. Osun is defined by ‘lush womanliness and sensuality’ according to The Times journalist, Richard Assheton, the primary source of this post. Thanks.
Below are some more articles on an associated topic: plastic pollution.
