Nigeria is looking to cash in on a global lithium mining boom while trying to avoid the curse of environmental damage, community grievance, and corruption that has scarred more than half-century of oil exploitation in the country’s southern delta region.
Nigeria’s lithium belt, stretching from Oyo in the southwest up to Kano in the north, is estimated to be worth more than $34 billion. Although it is not a top-10 producer, Nigeria’s lithium is exceptionally high-grade and the government is moving aggressively to expand its processing capacity to meet the roaring demand for lithium-ion batteries at the heart of the world’s clean energy transition.
With the right policies in place, Nigeria could boost economic growth, create jobs, and advance rural livelihoods. But in the rush to exploit its reserves, a price could also be paid by local communities impacted by environmental pollution, human rights violations, and the insecurity that often accompanies poorly regulated resource extraction.
The New Humanitarian, in collaboration with Nigeria’s Premium Times newspaper, is launching a series of reports exploring the humanitarian and rights-based challenges associated with the lithium boom, and the measures that can be put in place to better serve local communities.
A postponed promise
Nigeria is on the radar of foreign mining firms, and investors led by China are piling in – along with Australian, British and US companies. With a government ban in place on the export of raw lithium ore to maximise local value, Chinese investment in processing plants alone has hit $1.3 billion.
However, the non-profit Natural Resources Governance Institute (NRGI) warns that although Nigeria’s mineral sector provides a real opportunity for economic diversification, it is not a quick fix, and realising its full potential requires establishing effective regulatory systems.
“Stronger community engagement, environmental management, grievance mechanisms and transparency are essential to attract responsible investment, maintain public trust, and ensure mining delivers sustainable and inclusive development,” the NRGI said in a report released earlier this year.
Nigeria’s mining law sets clear provisions for community and environmental protection, however oversight is weak, and relevant government departments struggle with underfunding. “Resources and capacity are never enough,” said Olasehinde Oladusi, deputy director in the Ministry of Solid Minerals and Development.
In mineral-rich Niger State, the country’s largest, the department has only one vehicle and a total of four staff in its Mines Inspectorate Department – supposed to supervise all day-to-day operations – and the Mines Environmental Compliance Department (MEC).
On paper, mining and processing companies are supposed to win the approval of local communities before they begin work, which typically involves a Community Development Agreement (CDA) approved by the MEC outlining any agreed compensation.
This usually takes the form of investment in community infrastructure, from roads, to water, to education grants. However, a lopsided power relationship can mean that local communities struggle to keep mining firms accountable.
Kangimi is 40 kilometres from the northcentral city of Kaduna, where one of Nigeria’s first lithium processing plants has been built – a joint venture between the Chinese company Ming Xin Mineral Separation Nigeria Ltd and the state government.
Borehole water was promised, solar lighting, roads, a clinic, and jobs. But three years on, village head Danjuma Husseini said the cheap plastic taps for the water system have broken, the solar is underpowered, the clinic and roads have not materialised, while the village youth are only informally employed.
Village elders didn’t hire a lawyer when drawing up the CDA, and do not have a copy of the original agreement. “We weren’t used to such things,” Husseini explained. “Also, there’s no cyber café nearby to make a copy: It was our fault, but we’re learning.”
When The New Humanitarian/Premium Times last visited Kangimi in September, negotiations were underway with the company’s representatives for the building of a new mosque for the village. “But we still don’t really trust them,” said Husseini.
Part of his unease stems from worries over potential pollution from the processing plant’s run-off, which enters a purpose-built dam next to the reservoir that provides Kaduna city with drinking water, and Kangimi fishers a livelihood. The mud-built dam wall, about one metre high, is broken in a corner that allows seepage into the reservoir – and many months on, is still not fixed.
The reservoir water is treated, and there is no evidence of contamination, the state authorities insist. However, Sunday Duniya, the water treatment manager, acknowledged his department can run out of the necessary chemicals, and the water supply then has to be shut off as “we can’t serve untreated water”.
But he also noted the cracked dam wall, so close to the reservoir, was “absolutely wrong”, and was a matter for Kaduna State’s Environmental Protection Agency – which refused to comment for this story.
Criminalising the informal sector
Nigeria’s mining sector is overwhelmingly informal. Rural communities supplement farming incomes with the money they make from under the earth wielding picks and shovels during the dry season.
Dangoma village, in southern Kaduna State, is a landscape of circular pits across white mica-strewn ground, each owned by an individual miner. From the roughly five-metre deep central shafts, they dig horizontal tunnels underground. The miners can’t go deeper as they lack wood to shore up the shafts and fear pit collapses.
Out of school hours, children are also on the site, young girls with hoes picking through quartz on the surface, and the braver boys going underground – some only in their teens. The lithium and other ore collected is sold to middle men in Dangoma who sell it on to larger traders who visit intermittently.
People have been mining in Dangoma for years. The origin story is that two brothers from the village had moved to neighbouring Plateau State working on the artisanal mines there – and quickly realised the geology was the same. It has since become a financial lifeline for many families.
“This area is agriculturally rich, but you need capital to farm – and you don’t make your money until the harvest,” said miner Abdul Oma. “But with mining, you make your money the instant that you dig – if you’re lucky.”
There is, however, a tendency to criminalise the informal sector in Nigeria. In September, 37 young men died from asphyxiation after they were arrested in raids on mining sites in Niger State by the paramilitary Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, before being packed into an overcrowded and poorly ventilated cell.
Yet the process of registration to operate legally is complex and highly centralised. Miners need to form mining cooperatives before they can apply for a license, which, although relatively cheap, requires navigating an online platform and payment system, as well as additional layers of certification: It’s a level of digital and administrative savvy that’s beyond most rural miners.
The vast majority of miners are therefore effectively forced to operate informally, which makes them vulnerable to exploitation by so-called “bandits” – the armed criminal gangs that hold sway in much of Nigeria’s hinterland.
“Bandits don’t do mining themselves, but they hide in the unregulated sector,” noted Oladusi. “They create insecurity, they create panic, and are entrenched.”
The ore they steal or extort also becomes part of the formal value chain through middle men – or direct sales to licensed mines – and is then processed alongside regular lithium.
” We fear the bandits: They come to where people are mining and enslave us to mine for them. They can come at any time – you can’t predict. “
Birnin Gwari – on Kaduna’s northern border with Zamfara and Katsina states, and Niger to the west – is a case in point. The New Humanitarian/Premium Times interviewed four informal miners who all described how bandits prey on them: robbing them of their lithium – killing those who resist – and forcing local miners working in remote and isolated pits to labour for them.
“We fear the bandits: They come to where people are mining and enslave us to mine for them,” said one man in a Liverpool football shirt who asked not to be named. “They can come at any time – you can’t predict.”
He was among a group of six people kidnapped last year from his village and held for 18 days until his family could scrape together the few hundred dollars demanded in ransom.
Although the state government has re-opened the highway to Birnin Gwari – and a police escort is no longer needed to travel the previously hazardous route – a bandit economy based on resource exploitation and violence prevails in the countryside.
“There is no government presence, the bandits are the government,” said one of the miners. “Although there is security along the highway, and we feel somewhat protected, inside the villages there’s nothing.”
Nigeria is in a rush to maximise the benefits of its mineral wealth, but developing a coherent mining sector takes time. “The gestation period for mining is a long one,” said Dauda Garuba, the director of the Center for Democracy and Development think tank. “You don’t just turn up, take the ore, and then move on.”
Mining projects are often located in inaccessible areas that need investment in transport, power, and security. Although “value addition” – the local processing of lithium – is a cornerstone of government policy, it also requires the right mix of tax, policy incentives, and domestic demand, noted the NRGI report.
Pointing to the loopholes in Nigeria’s regulatory framework, Garuba offered an unflattering assessment: “I don’t think that what we’ve done so far is comprehensive enough to really take us to the next level [in mining development],” he noted.
This article is republished from thenewhumanitarian under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
An investigative reporter with Premium Times in Nigeria who specialises in conflict, environmental, and accountability reporting
Senior editor, Africa
