IN 2022, the Nigerian government banned the exportation of raw minerals without local processing or refining. This was intended to drive domestic economic growth. But in Nasarawa State, where lithium was found in commercial quantity, the country is losing millions to illegal miners, who often supply Chinese-owned companies, and exploit child labour.
Ten-year-old Celestina Geremiyah tugged at the long rope fastened to a stained 20-litre plastic container.
The gallon had been cut horizontally to create a wider opening and was filled with sand dug out of a mining pit in Paseli, a community in Nasarawa local government area in central Nigeria.
This is where unlicensed miners extract the critical mineral, lithium, used in producing batteries, for electric vehicles, power storage, and phones.
Geremiyah struggled with the weight of the sand as she pulled it a short distance away from the hole, emptied the container onto the ground, and returned it to the pit to be refilled.
As she repeated the toil, three other children were similarly engaged on the site, assisting miners who had dug their way several feet into the belly of the earth in search of lithium, a recently discovered mineral in Nigeria.
The global transition to renewable energy has led to a growing need for minerals such as lithium, positioning Nigeria as an emerging source of this critical mineral.
However, Nigeria’s extractive sector faces challenges, including weak regulatory enforcement and resource theft, resulting in lost government revenue and adverse environmental and human rights issues, such as child labour.
These issues raise concerns that Nigeria may not fully benefit from the global energy transition.
China’s dominance
The mining industry is dominated by China, which controls the global supply chains of renewable energy equipment and electric vehicles (EVs).
The Asian nation’s companies and nationals have often been accused of involvement in illegal mining and environmental pollution in Nigeria.
Investigations, spanning several days in Nasarawa and interviews with local miners, reveal that illegally extracted lithium from the area are mostly sold to Chinese entities.
“It is the Chinese that buy it,” said a source, who works as a middleman between the miners and buyers.
The source who asked not to be named for fear of losing his business with the Chinese said, “They come and buy it here, but if you want, you can take it to them and sell it. They buy in large quantities; in trucks from our hands.”
Some were even more specific, naming two Chinese lithium processors – Avatar New Energy Material Limited and Tongyi Group Limited – as the entities that buy their lithium sourced illegally and through children’s sweat.
While Tongyi denied buying from illegal sources, Avatar declined to comment, when contacted.
In May 2024, Nigeria’s president, Bola Tinubu, commissioned Avatar’s processing plant in Nasarawa, which the government described as the country’s largest at the time, built in Nasarawa.
The construction of the plant was in line with the government’s ban on the exportation of raw minerals without local processing or refining in 2022, to drive domestic economic growth and make the most of its resources, officials said.
Recently, more efforts have been put into optimising the benefits of Nigeria’s natural resources, including arrests of persons involved in illegal mining.
But despite these measures, minerals such as lithium are still being stolen in many parts of the country, including Nasarawa, where children are recruited to work at sites.
Child labour
While Geremiyah pulled up sand from the ground with her container, nine-year-old Abu’s job requires him to descend into a shallow mining pit and fetch out the sand himself with very little help.
As Abu descended into a dark hole where a miner was digging up soil, he was apparently oblivious to the risk he faced by crawling into the pit.
By the time he re-emerged, pushing up a plastic container full of sand, he looked tired and was covered in sweat.
At the mining sites in Tuluwa, a community in Kokona LGA, Nasarawa State, the situation was not different.
Three boys, between the ages of 12 and 15, were seen manually digging pits on an expanse of land that used to be a melon cultivated farm.
The miners with whom these children work in Paseli and Tuluwa are part of the hundreds of illegal miners that populate states with mineral resources in Nigeria, who engage in the tedious process of manually digging through the soil in search of lithium.
Not only is the process tedious, it is dangerous
In June 2024, three persons died in Paikoro, Niger state, when an illegal mining pit collapsed, trapping several persons underground.
In the same month, about 50 people were trapped when a mining pit, which was about 400 metres deep, collapsed in Shiroro LGA of Niger State.
Despite the casualties from such collapses and warnings by the government and security agencies, more young people venture into illegal mining due to poverty, unemployment and inadequate oversight by regulatory bodies.
“I started here recently because I need money. We mine lithium and we sell it out to Mallam Ibrahim Aliyu,” a miner called, Fear God Abu, told The ICIR, referring to a local, popular mineral trader.
Aliyu owns the land upon which Geremiyah and the nine-year-old Abu are made to assist illegal miners in digging up lithium. He told The ICIR that he is the chairman of the miners in the community.
He, along with some other residents of the community, are agents who serve as middlemen in a supply chain that links the illegal miners to other large-scale buyers, many of whom are Chinese nationals in the state.
Aliyu said he allows the miners, whom he refer to as labourers, mine on his land and buys the extracted product from them at more subsidised rates than he can get in other sites where he does not own land.
A covert supply chain
After the miners have concluded extraction, they sort through the sand, separating minerals from stones. The minerals are then stuffed into sacks; a process they describe as bagging.
A bag contains 50kg of the product and they sell back to agents like Aliyu at a price ranging between N3,500 and N4,000 per bag. He then resells at N7,000 or N8,000 to other large-scale buyers.
According to him, staff of some Chinese-owned companies in the state make up a significant percentage of his customer base.
“We sell to the dealers, those Chinese who come here from Overseas side. We also sell to anybody who comes here at all to buy,” he said.
‘Overseas’ is a term used to describe a popular location in the area.
Other agents who do not own land, connect the large-scale buyers to persons like Aliyu and get paid by the dealers for their services.
A truck of the mineral is made of 600 bags, each weighing 50 kg. This means that a truck of lithium contains 30,000kg or 30 tonnes of lithium, a tonne being 1,000kg.
One middleman, who asked not to be named because he is aware of the illegality of his work, told The ICIR that a tonne of lithium is sold for N165,000, meaning that one truck of the mineral is sold at about N4.95 million, according to information gathered from the agents.
A history of indictment
Chinese nationals have been repeatedly indicted in the illegal mining or purchase of natural resources in Nigeria.
In 2020, the Osun State Government announced the arrest of 27 illegal miners. 17 of them were Chinese nationals while the other 10 were locals, the government said.
In 2022, a 29-year-old Chinese was apprehended by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) after being caught with a truckload of crude minerals.
In April 2024, four Chinese were arrested by officials of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) at an illegal mining site where lithium is sold in Nasarawa.
The following month, the EFCC said it had secured the conviction of two Chinese suspects for illegally mining mineral resources in Kwara State.
Aliyu and others said there were many warehouses owned by several Chinese companies in the state. However, two companies were commonly identified by agents who sell illegally extracted minerals in Nasarawa: those belonging to Avatar and Tongyi.
Although Avatar is said to have built the biggest lithium processing factory in Nasarawa state, the company does not disclose its sources of feedstock. Also, the company’s name could not be found on the list of companies with valid mining licenses during checks by The ICIR on the website of the federal ministry of mines and steel.
The company did not grant The ICIR audience, despite repeated visits to the office in Nasarawa.
The ICIR also contacted Tongyi Group Ltd via telephone calls and visited the company’s head office in Abuja over the allegation of purchasing illegally mined lithium in Nasarawa.
At the office, the reporter was referred to a staffer, simply identified as Sam, who insisted that the miners from whom they purchase lithium do not mine illegally.
“You know in mining sector, there is what we call license to purchase. Buy and purchase license. So we, Tongyi, all the areas you see they are mining are licensed areas.
“They are not illegal, they are licensed areas. We don’t mine lithium but all the areas you see in Kokona- in fact currently in Nasarawa there is no free site where you can get an allocation for mining.
“If you go to mining cadastre office in Wuse, all those areas are licensed; not that they are doing illegal mining there. They are licensed companies,” he said.
But miners operating in unlicensed areas said they supply to Tongyi.
Tongyi Group Limited was also not found on the list of companies with valid titles on the website of the ministry of mines and steel.
A Freedom of Information (FOI) request sent to the mining cadastre office to confirm if both companies had valid titles was not replied for weeks.
The purchase of lithium by big players from unlicensed miners in Nasarawa not only shortchanges the government, it also encourages child labour, which contradicts the international labour laws that Nigeria is bound by, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Article 32 of the convention provides for the protection of children from “economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.”
More than one million children are engaged in child labour in mines and quarries, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO).
The ILO describes this activity as “a serious violation of children’s rights that puts children’s health and safety at risk and deprives them of an education.”
Regardless of extant local and international laws that protect people under 18 years from being used for such labour, children and teenagers crawl in and out of illegal mining pits in Paseli and Taluwa aiding illegal miners in their slow, tedious manual extraction of minerals.
Miners explain that the manual process of extraction used on illegal mining sites in the state was mostly due to lack of licenses.
“We don’t meet all the requirements before mining and that is why the government stops it and says it’s illegal mining. Now, this one we are doing here is manual. We do not involve all those machines because of the expenses of bringing them to the site and the risk.
“We that are mining now are doing it illegally. We don’t have the power to blast stones. If we blast, someone faraway can hear it. And it is done in the night, so definitely, they will come for you,” one of them said, requesting anonymity.
He added that agents like himself have lost huge sums invested in hiring machines for mining after the government ordered the closure of some illegal sites.
These losses have led agents and land owners to minimise the money they invested in the sites. Rather than hire machines like excavators, labourers dig up sand manually.
The ICIR contacted the director of mineral resources, ministry of environment and natural resources, Thomas Bashayi, over the purchase of lithium from illegal miners. He, however, declined saying he was not authorised to speak to journalists.
The permanent secretary of the ministry, Garba Rosha Mohammed, said there has been some monitoring of the activities going on in the area.
“We have been doing supervision as a ministry. We go round, see what people are doing. Actually, all those doing this are illegal miners. They are not licensed to mine in Nasarawa state.
“We will fish them out,” Mohammed said.
Experts blame government inefficiency, poverty
Although Mohammed said the ministry’s task force carried out monitoring activities, some of the reasons identified for the persistence of illegal mining in states across Nigeria by acting executive director, Ziva Community Initiative, Omaojor Ogedoh, include inefficiency by the government and poverty.
“The license gives you permission to mine. That makes you a miner. So anything done outside this is illegal. So the issue of mining, not just in Nasarawa state, but across the country is a very cumbersome process because the licensor is in Abuja, which is the ministry.
“These minerals are scattered all over the country which makes it very difficult to coordinate.
“One zonal mining officer might be responsible for managing six or even seven states. How effective can that be?” he questioned.
He stressed that the cumbersome and bureaucratic process of obtaining a mining license discourages many from following legal procedure.
According to him, the problem is exacerbated by the lack of awareness and poverty.
“People believe they can do anything they want at the state level, especially if they haven’t been approached by someone with a formal license,” he added.
Speaking on revenue leakage in the sector, Ogedoh said miners simply settle with the state mines officers, who give them free access to carry out their activities, thus contributing to significant revenue losses for the government.
The executive director, Renevlyn Development Initiative, Philip Jakpor, who decried the exploitation of children on mining sites also said during an interview with TVC news in June, that inadequate supervision by relevant government agencies was a contributory factor.
“The communities most times are not part of the decision-making about where to mine, where not to mine. And, of course, apart from the environmental crises, if you go to those places, you will still see children as young as even 10 in the mine fields.
“Nobody is monitoring what is happening, despite the fact that we have a mining act,” he said.
He called for better oversight by the government to avoid lithium’s discovery in Nigeria becoming a resource curse.
This story was sponsored by the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development under its Just Energy Transition Minerals Challenge Project.
Ijeoma Opara is a journalist with The ICIR. Reach her via [email protected] or @ije_le on Twitter.