37 Miners Die in Nigerian Custody Amid Illegal Gold Trade
The Last Free Breath Above the Pits
The last time the men in that cell drew clean air, they were standing above the gold pits at Wushishi-Lukoto, west of Minna. That was on 15 and 16 September 2025, when the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps moved through suspected illegal mines and locked up dozens of miners. [1] The NSCDC is a paramilitary group — an armed force that is not part of the regular national army. Its raids pulled the diggers off the workings and into cells in Minna, the capital of Niger state.
On Thursday, 37 of those detainees were found dead in NSCDC custody. [2] Many of them were children. The state governor, Umar Bago, said the dead included children aged 14 to 18 who had been working in the mines instead of going to school. [2] “There are issues of illegal mining and it is taking a toll on our children,” he said. Police and the NSCDC did not initially give a precise number of deaths; the governor later confirmed 37.
Dauda Shehu, a survivor, described the hours before the bodies were carried out. “We were jam-packed in the cell, no ventilation for us to breathe well,” he said. “All of a sudden we realised that we could not breathe and we were all scampering for where to get fresh air, we even appealed to them several times, banged the cell door, but they refused to answer us.” Another survivor, who asked not to be named, said he lived because he was near the cell’s entrance, where the air was better. “We were screaming for help,” he said, and the detainees told the guards that people were dying one after the other — the guards did not believe them.
A video shared online showed the bodies of dozens of young men clad only in shorts, most of whom appeared to be teenagers, sprawled on the ground in the open. Volunteers in gloves stood over the dead. Veiled women tried to identify the bodies of their relatives. Voices cursing those responsible could be heard in the background.
The Ledger of Cages and Teargas
The first official account of the deaths was an outbreak of disease, put forward by the NSCDC itself. An intelligence report seen by AFP said preliminary information suggested a different cause: overcrowding and inadequate ventilation. [2] The gap between those two explanations is not academic: the NSCDC’s own intelligence report attributes the deaths to overcrowding and inadequate ventilation, not to disease.
Nigeria’s interior minister, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, ordered the immediate suspension of the Niger state NSCDC commandant, Suberu Siyaka Aniviye, pending the outcome of an investigation. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu ordered an investigation into the deaths, after his government had earlier suspended some senior officials. The men were buried on Thursday, according to Islamic tradition, without any forensic investigation. That burial removed the material an inquiry would normally use to establish how 37 people died inside a locked room.
Grief moved into the streets on Thursday evening in Minna. On Friday, dozens of young people, including miners and their relatives, gathered near the NSCDC’s office in the city. Police cordoned off the area and tried to disperse them with teargas. Security forces also fired live rounds, a witness said, as protesters — some armed with sticks, machetes and traditional hunting rifles — called for justice, and others tried to set fire to government buildings in the Tunga neighbourhood. At least one body lay on the streets of the city.
Yusuf Auwal, a miner who joined the protesters, put the case in one line: “We are not thieves — we are simply seeking a way to make a living by mining.” Soldiers and police patrolled Minna to try to restore order, and a curfew began at 6pm local time on Friday. By then the security forces appeared to have restored order at least temporarily. The ledger has two sides. The operation removed dozens of miners from suspected illegal pits; it also left 37 dead, one commandant suspended, an investigation open, a state capital under curfew, and no forensic record at all.
Where the Ore Goes When Nobody Watches
Niger state is Nigeria’s largest state and more than twice the size of Belgium. It sits on deposits of tantalite, copper and lithium — minerals in strong demand for electric vehicles and clean energy technology; tantalite is a mineral ore from which tantalum, a metal used in electronics, is extracted. It also holds gold, and gold is what draws thousands of artisanal miners, the small-scale diggers who work pits rather than industrial mines.
The scramble for gold dug up in illegal mines in the state is fuelling violence by criminal gangs. The gangs tax the miners. They also demand a cut of the extracted ore as a levy — a fee paid in rock rather than cash — as the price of access to the pits.
Most of the illegally mined gold is smuggled to the United Arab Emirates, according to a 2024 Swissaid report on gold flows out of Africa. [3] There it is laundered into the global supply chain that reaches Europe, the United States, Asia and South Africa; laundering means passing the metal through transactions that give illegally sourced material the appearance of lawful origin. The report traces a chain that runs from the pits at Wushishi-Lukoto, where men and boys are detained and taxed, to the supply chain, where the metal becomes ordinary.
What the deaths have already changed:. Preliminary information in an intelligence report points instead to overcrowding and inadequate ventilation.
- The absence of a death toll. Police and the NSCDC gave no precise figure until the governor confirmed 37.
- The expectation that an inquiry will have bodies to examine. The dead were buried under Islamic tradition on Thursday, without forensic investigation.
- The commandant’s post as it stood. Suberu Siyaka Aniviye was suspended pending the outcome of an investigation.
- The campaign calendar. Three days of mourning were declared, and the start of campaigning for elections due in January was postponed.
- The local-only view of illegal mining. Most of the gold is laundered in the United Arab Emirates and in supply chains reaching Europe, the US, Asia and South Africa. [3]
- The assumption that knocking on a cell door brings someone. Survivors say they banged on the door repeatedly and got no answer.
Sources
1. Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps
2. AFP
3. Swissaid