Chairman of the Senate Committee on Interior, Adams Oshiomhole, has maintained that certain retired military generals conspire with foreigners to steal Nigeria’s solid minerals.

Oshiomhole initially made these allegations on Arise TV on Tuesday, February 4, 2025. However, he clarified on Wednesday that he did not accuse all retired generals of illegal mining but rather a few.

He said, “It’s not sensible to say so. That would be a reckless, sweeping generalisation. That is not what I said. I said the problem is that some, and I still believe it to be so; I know it to be so. I said some retired generals are involved. And somehow, we are not deploying the same force as a nation that we deploy to protect our oil in the Niger Delta.”

The former Edo State Governor, claimed that his allegations are based on a report from a retired general who witnessed foreigners stealing solid minerals in the country in connivance with some retired generals.

Oshiomhole also stated that he had requested the retired general to write a brief report on the matter, which he then submitted to former President Muhammadu Buhari.

“There is no way I can comprehend this story because I have no military training or secret training. I pleaded with him to do a summary, not more than two, a maximum of three pages, that I will submit as chairman of the ruling party at that time, that l will submit to the president, who incidentally is a retired general before becoming the president of Nigeria.

“So he will understand the issues more clearly. I advised him to put his phone number so that the president can call him if he so wishes and give him this detailed security dimension. Because he warned me that if that thing is not checked, what is happening in the Northeast will be child’s play.

“And so I took this letter, as I promised him, because I saw a patriotic officer, though retired, but not tired of his loyalty to Nigeria. And I gave it to then-President Buhari.

“And I said, sir, go through it; it is self-explanatory. My advice is that you can call him, and he can give you more graphic details of what he saw and what he knows and his fears about what will happen if this is not nipped in the bud,” Oshiomhole recalled.

“It is absolutely impossible for anyone, particularly foreigners, far away outside the African continent, coming to Nigeria, locating a site, not being geologists and they go straight to where they can find particular solid minerals, and they start mining it, and they take it away,” he said