Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State has said that preliminary investigation revealed foreign names in the Corporate Affairs Commission documents of the mining firm that stored explosives that caused the Tuesday, January 16 explosion in Ibadan, the state capital.
An explosion rocked parts of Ibadan on Tuesday night, leaving some persons dead, while many were reported injured with property, which figure had yet to be compiled, flattened to rubbles or damaged.
Makinde, on Wednesday, January 17, said that preliminary investigations revealed that illegal miners occupying one of the houses in the Bodija area of the state capital stored explosive devices that caused the blast.
The governor, while appearing on Channels TV Politics Today, promised to uncover the identities of all those involved in the blast.
He explained that the explosion revealed the failure of the neighbourhood association which did not report the activities of illegal miners in the area to law enforcement agencies.
He stated: “Yes, we are trying to uncover the identity of the people involved. We have done a few fact-finding on the company involved. And, yes, there are indeed some foreign names in the CAC documents of the company involved, but these are still very early days. We don’t have any reason to cover anything.
“It is a failure of the neighbourhood association because we always admonish our people: If you see something that doesn’t look right, then bring it to the attention of the authorities and then they will do something about it.
“So, people within this neighbourhood are aware of some of these things but it was never brought to the attention of the authority.”
To prevent the future occurrence of this tragedy, Makinde said he would seek approval from President Bola Tinubu to compel miners with explosives to store them with the military.
The governor continued, “I will be seeking approval from the President for us in Oyo State to ensure that any mining activity, anybody that has to deal with explosives, take it to storage with the military. And if they need to use it, they go there, collect it and the military will escort them to where they will use it.
“So in the days ahead, once I have the nod of Mr President, I should be signing an executive order that will make it mandatory for anybody dealing with explosives in Oyo State to have it stored with the military.
“It is still early; they are still gathering a lot of materials and they are putting them together. But I can tell you, it’s more of the quantity of what this will put together. And we don’t want to speculate. So in the hours ahead, we will be briefing the people about the exact situation.”
