Survivors of a catastrophic detention cell in central Nigeria have described the final desperate moments inside a cramped, airless room where 37 suspected illegal gold miners – many of them children – suffocated to death while in the custody of a paramilitary corps. The harrowing accounts emerged on Friday as riot police fired teargas at protesters in the city of Minna, with an overnight curfew imposed to contain the unrest.
The victims were among dozens of miners arrested during raids on unauthorised gold diggings in Niger state. They were held in cells operated by the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), a paramilitary organisation that works alongside the police. Initial official statements attributed the deaths to a disease outbreak, but an intelligence report seen by Agence France-Presse has indicated that overcrowding and inadequate ventilation were the likely causes.
‘We Were Jam-Packed’
Dauda Shehu, one of the survivors, spoke to journalists from a hospital bed in Minna on Friday. His account painted a picture of utter helplessness as detainees gasped for air behind a locked steel door.
“We were jam-packed in the cell, no ventilation for us to breathe well,” Shehu 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, told AFP he only survived because he was near the entrance, where the air was slightly more breathable. “We were screaming for help,” he said, adding that detainees had warned the guards that “people are dying one after the other. They did not believe us.”
The deaths were discovered on Thursday, when the scale of the tragedy became clear. A video shared online showed the bodies of dozens of young men, most clad only in shorts and appearing to be teenagers, lying on the ground outside the detention block. Volunteers in gloves could be seen standing over the dead, while veiled women searched desperately for their relatives. In the background, voices could be heard cursing those responsible for the catastrophe.
Niger state’s governor, Mohammed Umaru Bago, confirmed that many of the dead were children aged between 14 and 18. “There are issues of illegal mining and it is taking a toll on our children,” he said, visibly shaken. He declared three days of mourning and postponed the start of campaigning for elections due in January. The victims were buried on Thursday, in accordance with Islamic tradition, without any forensic examinations.
Protests Met With Teargas and Live Rounds
Anger over the deaths spilled onto the streets of Minna within hours. By Friday, dozens of young people – among them miners and relatives of the victims – had gathered near the NSCDC’s office in the city. Police cordoned off the area and attempted to disperse the crowd with teargas. A Reuters witness saw security forces fire live rounds as some protesters, armed with sticks, machetes and traditional hunting rifles, called for justice.
“We are not thieves – we are simply seeking a way to make a living by mining,” said Yusuf Auwal, a miner who joined the protest. At least one body lay on the streets as soldiers and police officers patrolled Minna in an effort to restore order. Some protesters attempted to set fire to government buildings in the Tunga neighbourhood. By the time the curfew began at 6pm local time, security forces appeared to have at least temporarily regained control of the streets.
The NSCDC said the detainees had been arrested during raids on suspected illegal mines on 15 and 16 September in the Wushishi-Lukoto area, west of Minna. Nigeria’s interior minister, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, ordered the immediate suspension of the Niger state NSCDC commandant, Suberu Siyaka Aniviye, pending an investigation. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has also ordered an inquiry into the deaths, after his government suspended several senior officials.
A Deadly Trade in Gold
Niger state, the largest in Nigeria and more than twice the size of Belgium, sits on a wealth of minerals. Its gold reserves attract tens of thousands of artisanal miners, most of whom work in dangerous, unregulated conditions. But the scramble for gold has also fuelled violence. Criminal gangs, according to officials and experts, tax the miners and demand a cut of the extracted ore as a levy for allowing access to the pits.
Most of the illegally mined gold is smuggled to the United Arab Emirates, where it is laundered into the global supply chain across Europe, the US, Asia and South Africa, according to a 2024 report by the Swiss organisation Swissaid. Beyond gold, Niger state also holds significant deposits of tantalite, copper and lithium – minerals in high demand for electric vehicles and clean energy technology.
Friday’s protests were not merely a spontaneous outburst of grief. They were an eruption of long-simmering frustration with a system that criminalises desperate young men and boys while allowing a shadow economy of smuggling and extortion to flourish. The victims, many of whom should have been in school, died not in a mining accident but in state custody, behind bars, gasping for air.
Why it Matters
The deaths in Minna are a grim reminder of the human cost of unregulated resource extraction in West Africa. They expose a justice system that locks up children alongside adults, a paramilitary force that appears to have ignored desperate pleas, and a government that initially sought to blame disease rather than its own institutions. As Nigeria’s mineral wealth becomes ever more central to the global energy transition, the world’s appetite for these resources is directly entangled with the fate of the young men and boys who dig them out of the earth. If the international community looks away, their deaths will be just another footnote in the long, bloody ledger of the gold rush.
