The Global Race for Critical Minerals, and Nigeria’s Criminalization of Artisanal Miners

Adeola Aderemi

This is the thought that I have not been able to shake off: the brutal deaths of thirty-seven Nigerians while in state custody in Minna, Niger State, after they were arrested for suspected “illegal” mining.

Their immediate families and all of us are suddenly thrown into mourning. It is horrific, gruesome and barbaric, and the circumstances around it remind us that the government is more reactive than proactive.

To be fair, the authorities moved relatively quickly to suspend some senior officials, condemn the deaths and set up an independent inquiry with credible people on the panel. But I would not leap to my feet to applaud the government. I’m stuck on the fact that a legal and regulatory framework that recognizes and formalizes artisanal mining could have helped prevent these avoidable deaths.

The government should be ashamed that 37 citizens died in the custody of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC). Three survivors have recounted what happened the night that their colleagues died. They claimed that NSCDC personnel sprayed some substance into the crowded cell and kept the doors locked, ignoring cries for help. Dauda Shehu, 29, told Reuters that “they sprayed something which smelled like a perfume. Hours later we started feeling throats itching, then we started struggling to breathe. People started dying.”

Now, we are made to ask that burning question: is criminalization of artisanal mining a solution to illegal mineral extraction, or a policy response that deepens poverty, insecurity and state violence while leaving the powerful actors in the mining value chain untouched?

When 37 young men arrested for suspected illegal mining died in a crowded state cell, did Nigeria confront an unforeseeable health emergency, or the predictable consequence of treating poor artisanal miners as security threats rather than human beings entitled to safety, due process and dignity?

I’d argue that artisanal mining can be among the hardest labor that humans undertake. Yet Nigeria’s economic conditions have pushed many young men into finding livelihoods the hard way.

For the basics, artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) is a largely informal economic sector that includes workers around the globe who use their hands and basic tools such as picks and shovels to extract vital metals from the earth, including cobalt, tin, tungsten and tantalum, as well as gold, diamonds, gemstones, iron, lithium and more. These workers, mostly poor, feed their families through artisanal mining. The same minerals extracted by poor people in dangerous informal economies are increasingly valuable to sophisticated global economies because they underpin technology, energy and the AI economy.

To be clear, metals are critical to the world’s economies. They are necessary for computers, mobile phones, airplanes, medical devices, electric vehicles, rechargeable batteries and much more.

Yes, countries like China and the United States, two of the world’s major economic powers, are going where they can find these critical minerals, using both informal and formal means to acquire them to serve their economic interests. Indeed, the current geopolitical competition over critical minerals is more complicated.

For example, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, China and the United States are in a duel. They are sending their billionaires, they are sending their envoys, and they are signing difficult-to-understand agreements with the DRC government. A U.S. mining firm, KoBold Metals, backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, is among the companies pursuing critical-mineral opportunities in the DRC. It is like another scramble for Africa.

What happened in Nigeria is not simply a mining-safety story. It is a policy failure.

This event sits at the intersection of three policy failures: unregulated artisanal mining, weak rural livelihoods, and the treatment of people in state custody.

Artisanal mining is often grouped carelessly with “illegal mining.” That language is grave, to say the least. Some miners may operate without required licences, outside approved sites or in unsafe conditions. Nevertheless, they remain rights-bearing persons. Suspected regulatory or criminal violations do not remove the state’s duty to provide humane detention, adequate space, air, water, medical attention and timely judicial processing.

Nigeria’s broader artisanal-mining sector reflects economic reality. For many people in mineral-rich but economically marginalized communities, mining is a livelihood of last resort, sustained by unemployment, land pressure, limited agricultural returns and demand for gold, tin, columbite and other minerals. Enforcement that focuses narrowly on arrests, without viable formalization pathways, can displace poverty rather than solve illegal extraction.

The Minna deaths also follow other fatal mining-related incidents in 2026. In February, dozens of miners died in a Wase, Plateau State, underground site, reportedly linked to toxic gas exposure. Reports placed the death toll at 37 or 38, with additional injuries. On 22 September, four artisanal tin miners, two men and two women, were reported killed when an unsupported pit collapsed in Baban Rafi, Bokkos LGA, Plateau State.

These incidents show that Nigerian artisanal miners face two different but connected hazards: occupational and governance danger.

The Minna deaths should be understood as a test of Nigeria’s rule of law. The government has a legitimate responsibility to regulate illegal and unsafe mining, but it has a duty to care as well.

The Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, has publicly stated that government institutions must never become “places of death,” and he is spot on. Many people working informally in artisanal mining are young, poor, underemployed and excluded from formal labour markets.

Nigeria needs a policy shift from raid-and-detention enforcement of artisanal miners. The government should not focus on providing licences to the “big men” alone, just as it continues to do with oil blocs. It needs to formalize artisanal mining by providing appropriate types of licences for these small miners, safety training, geological information, equipment leasing, mineral-buying centres and environmental compliance.

This formalization should cost less and take less time. It can reduce illegal operations and address institutional failures, as experienced with the NSCDC. A formalized artisanal livelihood can help distinguish criminal profiteers from legitimate small-scale miners, prevent workplace disasters and reduce further loss of life.

This is my ask: Nigeria’s policy framework should treat artisanal – mining as an economic sector requiring formalization rather than criminalizing livelihoods.

Adeola Akinremi is a public policy advisor, strategic communications expert, and the founder and CEO of Hintells, an AI-powered intelligence platform serving businesses and diplomatic missions in Washington, D.C. He has extensive multilateral experience advising on governance, economic and policy reforms across global markets and can be reached at: adeola@hintells.com