Nigeria buries 37 miners who died in NSCDC custody at Minna

Thirty-seven people suspected of illegal mining died in the custody of Nigeria’s civil defence corps in Minna, the capital of Niger state, in the early hours of Thursday 17 September 2026.

The deaths were announced by the state governor, Mohammed Umaru Bago, at a news conference in Minna broadcast by Nigeria’s TVC News television. “This morning we woke up to the news that about 37 persons died in the custody of the civil defence here in Minna,” the governor said. “It’s so sad, it’s so tragic.”

Bago declared three days of mourning and postponed the start of campaigning for elections due in January. He said a committee of inquiry had been set up and had already begun work.

Two accounts of how they died

The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, which partners with the police to protect lives and critical national assets, said it had rounded up scores of suspected illegal miners on Tuesday and Wednesday. In its account, scores of the detained suspects were found dead in the early hours of 17 September following a suspected outbreak of disease.

An intelligence report seen by the news agency AFP gives a different explanation. Preliminary information in that report suggests the fatalities may have resulted from overcrowding and inadequate ventilation inside the detention facility.

The Niger state police chief ordered the immediate commencement of an investigation into the deaths while the men were in the custody of the civil defence corps, police spokesman Wasiu Abiodun said. That investigation is separate from the governor’s committee of inquiry, and it is the police who will establish what the cell held and what the coroner’s findings show.

What the video showed

A 40-second video shared online showed the bodies of dozens of young men clad only in shorts, most of whom appeared to be teenagers, lying on the ground in the open. Volunteers wearing gloves stood over them. Veiled women tried to identify the bodies of their relatives. Voices shouting curses on those responsible could be heard in the background.

The mass deaths reportedly triggered protests by groups of miners and sympathisers in Minna, where cars and other belongings were damaged, according to the intelligence report seen by AFP.

The gold that leaves the country

Niger state is more than twice the size of Belgium and rich in minerals. It attracts thousands of artisanal miners, most of them drawn by the hope of striking gold. The scramble for gold dug up in illegal mines is also fuelling violence by criminal gangs known locally as bandits, who tax the miners and demand a cut of the extracted ore as a levy to allow them access to the pits.

Most of the illegally mined gold is smuggled out to the United Arab Emirates, from where it is laundered into the global supply chain in Europe, the United States, Asia and South Africa, according to a 2024 SwissAid report.

That is the line that reaches this country. South Africa is named in that report as a destination in the laundering chain, which means gold that leaves a Nigerian pit without a licence can enter legitimate refining and manufacturing here. The same 2024 report is the reference point for anyone who wants to trace how unlicensed African gold becomes a bar with a serial number.

Apart from gold, Niger state sits on deposits of tantalite, copper and lithium. Lithium is in strong demand for electric vehicles and clean energy technology, and it is the mineral South Africa’s own mining houses are racing to develop. The governance of artisanal mining in West Africa is therefore not a distant story. It sets the price and the supply of the minerals that will decide whether South Africa’s battery and component industries have feedstock.

What a South African reader should take from it

The deaths at Minna are a Nigerian matter for Nigerian courts, a Nigerian police investigation and a Nigerian inquiry. What travels is the ore.

South Africa’s own experience of illegal mining is well documented, from the abandoned shafts of the Witwatersrand to the zama zama gangs who work them. The lesson from Minna is about custody. When a state rounds up people who are suspected of a crime, the state takes responsibility for their lives from that moment. Disease, overcrowding and ventilation are not accidents of fate. They are conditions inside a facility that a state controls.

The civil defence corps has denied responsibility by pointing to disease. The intelligence report points to the cell. The police investigation and the governor’s committee will decide which account the record supports, and the families in Minna will be watching both.

What happens next

The committee of inquiry set up by Governor Bago has started work. The police investigation ordered by the Niger state police chief is under way. Nigeria’s election campaigning, postponed for three days of mourning, resumes ahead of the January vote.

Source: eNCA, Thirty-seven suspected illegal miners die in custody in Nigeria, 18 September 2026.