Avoidable mining tragedies in Niger, Taraba

TWO fresh mining tragedies in Niger and Taraba states expose, once again, the frightening lack of value Nigeria places on human life, and the price it pays for allowing a lucrative industry to operate in the shadows. Thomas Hobbes’ 1651 description of life as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” sounds disturbingly contemporary in a country where preventable deaths routinely follow official negligence.

On September 17, 37 illegal miners reportedly died in detention in Minna, Niger State, under circumstances that remain the subject of investigation.

Barely 24 hours later, another group of illegal miners, reportedly between five and 22, died when a mine pit collapsed in Mayo Kam, Bali Local Government Area of Taraba State. The scale of these tragedies is appalling; their avoidability is even more disturbing.

The Minna deaths have rightly attracted international attention and widespread outrage. On September 15, officers of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps reportedly arrested 50 illegal miners in Borgu Local Government Area. They transported them about 300 kilometres to a detention facility in Minna. Two days later, 37 of them were dead.

That should never have happened.

A suspect is not a criminal until convicted by a competent court. Detention is not a death sentence. Once the state takes a person into custody, it assumes a heightened responsibility for that person’s safety and welfare. The government cannot arrest people in the name of enforcing the law and then lose them in custody.

The circumstances surrounding the deaths make the episode even more disturbing. One of the victims was reportedly only 17. There were allegations that the detainees had been packed into an overcrowded cell and suffocated.

The NSCDC initially attributed the deaths to an outbreak of diphtheria before subsequently retracting that explanation. Until an independent investigation establishes what happened, the precise cause of death remains unproven.

But the accounts of survivors are chilling. They reportedly watched people collapse “one after another” while the cell doors remained shut despite pleas for help. Those who survived were said to have been closer to the small windows.

If established, such circumstances would represent a grave failure of custodial responsibility.

Nigeria already has a notorious history of overcrowded prisons and detention centres. The Minna tragedy should therefore not be treated simply as an isolated administrative failure.

The deaths triggered protests in Minna, prompting Governor Ahmed Bago to impose a 24-hour curfew. Reports that security personnel shot a protester during the unrest add another troubling dimension to an incident that was already demanding accountability.

The suspension of the Niger NSCDC commandant and other senior officers by the Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, as well as the committee established to determine the cause of the deaths, are appropriate immediate steps.

The country needs answers, responsibility and, where wrongdoing is established, prosecution.

The Taraba tragedy is equally troubling because it illustrates the government’s inability to prevent people from repeatedly entering dangerous and unregulated mine sites.

On September 18, miners died when a pit collapsed in Mayo Kam. The incident was hardly unforeseeable. The state government had already established a task force on illegal mining and reportedly shut several mining sites. Yet, with enforcement weak, miners returned to the pits.

That is not regulation. It is a revolving door.

Nigeria’s illegal-mining crisis has grown far beyond an environmental problem. It is now a national security, public-health, economic and governance crisis.

Illegal mining has expanded across several states, including Zamfara, Niger, Taraba, Plateau, Nasarawa, Bauchi, Sokoto and Osun, while criminal networks and foreign operators have been repeatedly linked to illicit extraction and mineral smuggling.

The human cost has been devastating. Women and children have also been caught in the consequences of unsafe mining and mineral contamination. The lead-poisoning crisis in Zamfara, which the World Health Organisation linked to gold-mining activities, resulted in hundreds of deaths, including children, in 2010. Other deadly incidents have followed.

Illegal mining has also intersected with insecurity. In parts of the North-West, the proceeds from illegal gold mining have been linked by authorities and researchers to criminal networks and banditry.

The result is a toxic convergence of economic desperation, environmental destruction, organised crime and weak state enforcement.

Yet Nigeria is sitting on mineral wealth that could be generating legitimate jobs, investment and government revenue on a vastly different scale.

• Niger traditional ruler hails Idris’ respect for institutions
• Groups urge FG to publish findings on 37 miners’ death
• Miners’ deaths: NSCDC pledges justice, says no cover-up

The global mining industry demonstrates what is possible when mineral resources are properly regulated and developed. Mining.com estimates that the world’s 50 largest mining companies were collectively worth about $2.17 trillion in 2026. Nigeria, despite its considerable mineral endowment, continues to capture only a fraction of the value that could be generated from its resources.

Instead, the country loses enormous sums through illegal extraction and smuggling. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, citing figures from the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, has put Nigeria’s annual losses from illegal mining and gold smuggling at about $9 billion. SWISSAID has separately estimated that illegally smuggled Nigerian gold is worth about $2 billion annually.

These figures should horrify a country struggling to raise foreign exchange, finance infrastructure and create employment.

The paradox is glaring: Nigeria is poor enough to desperately need the revenue from its minerals, yet sufficiently resource-rich to attract powerful interests into an illicit mining economy. The state loses revenue, communities lose their environment, young people lose educational opportunities and miners lose their lives.

That is an intolerable bargain.

The answer, however, cannot simply be another committee or another periodic raid on mining sites.

Nigeria has had task forces, enforcement drives, licensing regimes and mining reforms for years. Yet illegal mining continues to flourish. The persistence of the problem suggests that the central failure is not a lack of policy documents but weak and inconsistent implementation.

The government must therefore attack the problem from both ends.

First, enforcement must become sustained rather than episodic. Illegal mining sites cannot be closed today and reopened tomorrow.

State governments, security agencies and federal mining authorities must establish permanent mechanisms for identifying, sealing and monitoring illegal operations. Where officials facilitate or profit from illegal mining, they too must face prosecution.

Second, the government should distinguish between criminal mining networks and impoverished artisanal miners whose livelihoods depend on mineral extraction.

Formalising viable artisanal and small-scale mining, providing safer operating conditions and bringing legitimate operators into the licensing system would be more productive than relying solely on arrests and site closures.

Third, the government must address the constitutional and institutional structure of mineral ownership.

Section 44 and Item 39 of the Second Schedule to the 1999 Constitution place mineral resources under federal control. Whatever the historical rationale, the present system deserves serious reconsideration in the context of fiscal federalism and effective resource governance.

The National Assembly and the states should engage in a serious constitutional conversation about whether greater subnational participation in mineral development could produce better regulation, investment and accountability. Any reform must, however, preserve national standards, environmental safeguards and the rights of host communities.

Nigeria should make legitimate mining investable. Transparent licensing, reliable geological data, predictable taxation, enforceable community agreements and credible security would attract serious international operators while making illegal extraction less attractive.

Above all, the government must stop treating mining deaths as inevitable collateral damage.

The Minna deaths demand an independent and credible investigation into what happened to people who were alive when they entered government custody. The Taraba deaths demand an equally serious examination of why supposedly closed mining sites remained accessible.

Both tragedies point to the same uncomfortable truth: the Nigerian state often arrives after disaster, rather than preventing it.

That must change.

Mineral wealth should not be a curse that produces smuggling, insecurity, poisoned communities and collapsed mine pits. Nor should government custody become a death trap.

Nigeria cannot continue to bury miners while allowing its minerals to be spirited away. The resources beneath the ground belong to the country’s future. The government must ensure that extracting them does not cost Nigerians their lives.