By Septimus Senessie in Kono
A mudslide, blamed on town mining, has claimed the life of Pastor Aiah Fengai Adama of the Church of Miracles in Motema, leaving his wife, Finda Adama with serious injuries.
The Motema police division in the Nimikoro Chiefdom of Kono is looking into the accident which happened some 50 meters away from the police station.
According to the injured wife of the deceased pastor, it all happened around 5:00 pm on 8 May when he was mining at the back of the Motema police division. She said he asked her to bring him water after working for several hours in the 20-foot deep mining pit.
On her way back there was a huge crack undetected, which she stepped on.
“By the time I realised it, I felt the soil suddenly cut under me and I fell into the pit and in the process my husband was covered by the huge cake of soil. My feet were trapped in one of the crevices,” she explained to Politico in tears.
She recalled that her husband was a “powerful man of God who healed the sick and performed miracles”, adding that “with the help of the Holy Spirit, my husband healed hundreds of sick people with various kinds of demonic troubles”.
A retired sergeant in the army, Thomas Williams, said that he was sick for 10 years and was informed about the deceased as someone who could be of help to him. He explained, in tears, that the death of the pastor was a big loss to them given that “the servant of God would not complete his mission of healing the sick and winning the lost souls.”
Speaking to Politico, the Local Unit Commander of Motema Police Division, Superintendent Momodu Koroma, confirmed that he had received a call around 5 pm on the day of the incident from one of his police officers alerting him to a fatal landslide just at the back of his station.
He said he ordered his men to mobilise the community to act fast to save the life of the woman and exhume the body of the pastor. He said the officers acted as ordered and recovered the corpse and rescued the wife from the wreckage. They were taken to the government hospital in Koidu and a post-mortem done on the dead body before it was handed over to the family for burial.
He said “no arrest was made so far even though investigations were ongoing. The mining was legal with license from the ministry of Mines and Mineral Recourses”.
Supt Momodu said that about a month ago, a similar incident had occurred at Futingaya in the same chiefdom in which an underground gold mining pit claimed the lives of two miners.
Paramount Chief of Nimikoro Chiefdom, Aiah Denton Bona Foamansa III condemned town mining, describing it as “cheating” on the chiefdom authorities. He declined to comment on whether or not the mining site was licensed.
