By FAROOQ KPEROGI

At the African Studies Association conference here in Atlanta late last year, Professor Tade Aina, Senior Programs Director at the Andrew Carnegie Foundation and one of Africa’s most cerebral sociologists, called me aside and said while he appreciated my interventions on the insecurity engulfing Nigeria, he was disappointed that I had never explored how mining fuels it.

I never stopped thinking about the insights he shared with me, which several other people have corroborated. This week, I decided to stop thinking and start digging.

Let me be clear from the outset that illegal mining is not the sole driver of Nigeria’s insecurity. Professor Aina didn’t suggest that. It would be analytically lazy and factually wrong to say that. Nigeria’s unabating insecurity sprouts from state absence, rural poverty, elite complicity, climate stress, ethnic anxieties, religious extremism, collapsed local economies, ungoverned forests, arms trafficking, the hollowing out of traditional authority and the astounding incompetence of successive governments.

But illegal mining has become one of the least discussed engines that lubricate the machinery of terror in parts of Nigeria.

Ample evidence shows that bandits and terrorists sometimes operate around mining sites. This has made mining a conflict economy. It feeds violence, finances armed groups, incentivizes territorial capture, corrupts local authority and creates an illicit transnational supply chain that converts Nigerian blood into foreign profit.

As far back as June 16, 2020, Dr. Maurice Ogbonnaya of the Institute for Security Studies wrote that “collaboration between politically connected Nigerians and Chinese corporations in illegal gold mining drives rural banditry and violent local conflicts” in parts of Nigeria, including the Northwest, the Northcentral and, to some extent, the Southwest.

He also reported that sponsors of illegal mining also fund banditry and cattle rustling in mining communities to displace people and create opportunities for illegal miners to operate.

The ENACT policy brief of November 19, 2020, also written by Ogbonnaya, put it even more starkly. It said criminal collaboration in illegal gold mining between “Nigerians in high positions of authority” and foreign corporations deprives the state of legitimate earnings and “drives rural banditry and violent local conflicts.”

That sentence deserves to be engraved on the forehead of our national security establishment. For too long, official Nigeria has treated insecurity as merely a military problem. It deploys soldiers, bombs forests, declares bans, arrests a few expendable poor people and then returns to sleep.

But the people who buy the gold, arrange the licenses, launder the proceeds, bribe officials, hire local muscle and export the minerals are rarely the ones who face the law.

The WikkiTimes investigation of September 16, 2023, by Yakubu Mohammed offers one of the most chilling windows into this dark economy. The report showed that Chinese-affiliated miners operating under the licenses of Eso Terra Investment Limited and Majelo Global Resources Limited plundered minerals in Kurebe and surrounding villages in Shiroro Local Government Area of Niger State while bribing the Dogo Gide terror faction. The report said mining continued despite the presence of ISWAP and Dogo Gide’s faction, and despite the flight of many residents after attacks by both terrorists and the military.

One local miner told WikkiTimes that terrorists would seize mined stones and block their movement until they were paid “N5 million or more.” He added that “even motorcycles were taken to them.” Another miner said, “So the bandits were paid N3 million every week.”

That is not ordinary criminality. It is taxation by terror. It is sovereignty ceded to murderers. It is the privatization of state power by men with guns, lubricated by mineral greed.

Perhaps the most devastating line in the WikkiTimes report came from Engineer Adamu Garba Musa, Director of Mining in the Niger State Ministry of Solid and Mineral Resources. Reacting to the paper’s findings, he asked: “If bandits are disturbing people, how come the company is working successfully?”

That question captures the whole Nigerian security tragedy in one sentence. How can ordinary villagers be unable to farm, travel, sleep or bury their dead in peace while mining companies operate in the same “unsafe” spaces?

The answer is simple. The insecurity that is tragedy for villagers is business cost for illegal miners. They simply add bandit bribes to operating expenses. The villager pays with blood. The miner pays with cash. The terrorist collects from both.

Good Governance Africa’s March 5, 2026, report on Zamfara’s criminal gold economy says Zamfara has become a major theater of insecurity not only because of the scale of violence but also because natural resources now play a central role in sustaining it. The report argues that gold has become “a strategic resource for violent actors,” not merely a law-and-order problem.

Reuters reported on May 15, 2026, that a joint NEITI and ANEEJ report found that Nigeria loses vast mineral revenue to illegal trading networks dominated by foreign buyers, shell companies and armed criminal groups. It said foreign buyers, especially Chinese actors, exert disproportionate influence over pricing, purchasing arrangements and export channels.

It also noted that 80 percent of mining in Northwest Nigeria is estimated to be illegal, with activity surging between 2022 and 2024 in areas affected by banditry and terrorism.

For balance, it is important to point out that China has denied allegations that its nationals or companies fund terror through illegal mining. In February 2026, the Chinese embassy in Nigeria described such allegations as “completely baseless” and said China has “zero tolerance” for illegal mining by its companies.

That denial deserves to be reported, but it does not erase the repeatedly documented involvement of Chinese nationals, Chinese-linked entities and Nigerian collaborators in illegal mining scandals. The problem is not China as a country. The problem is a predatory extractive economy in which some foreign actors, Nigerian officials, local fixers, armed groups and criminal middlemen have found profitable accommodation.

The Nigerian government knows this. In December 2024, Reuters reported that Nigeria lifted a five-year ban on mining exploration in Zamfara, a ban imposed in 2019 after incessant bandit attacks. The minister of solid minerals, Dele Alake, said illegal miners had exploited Zamfara’s resources during the suspension. In other words, the ban punished lawful possibilities while rewarding unlawful realities.

Nonetheless, the government has recently taken steps that should not be dismissed. Premium Times reported on February 17, 2026, that the Ministry of Solid Minerals established 388 mineral buying centers in 2024 to boost revenue and curb illegal mining. Alake also said mining marshals had arrested more than 350 illegal miners and prosecuted more than 150. He said artisanal miners were being encouraged to form cooperatives so they could become formalized, bankable and taxable.

These are useful steps, but they will be useless if they target only the barefoot digger and leave the air-conditioned criminal untouched. As I’ve always argued, Nigeria does not lack laws. What it lacks are consequences for powerful lawbreakers.

So, what should be done?

First, illegal mining must be treated as a national security emergency. Every major mining site in Zamfara, Niger, Kaduna, Katsina, Nasarawa, Plateau and elsewhere should be mapped through satellite imagery, local intelligence and on-the-ground inspection. The government should know who owns which license, who operates the site, who buys the minerals, who transports them and where they end up.

Second, beneficial ownership of all mining licenses must be published in a searchable public database. Nigerians should know the real human beings behind shell companies. A license should not be a mask for bandits, retired generals, politicians, foreign proxies or politically connected criminals.

Third, mineral buying centers must be tied to strict traceability. Gold, lithium and other high-value minerals should not move from pit to port without documentation. Every bag should have an origin, a buyer, a tax record and an export trail. Any mineral without a traceable source should be treated like stolen crude oil.

Fourth, Nigeria must go after the money. Arresting poor artisanal miners while leaving exporters, financiers, corrupt officials and foreign buyers untouched is judicial theater. Bank accounts should be frozen. Suspicious mineral exports should be seized. Customs, immigration, mining cadaster officials and security officers who facilitate illegal mining should be prosecuted publicly.

Fifth, foreign governments whose nationals are repeatedly implicated must be engaged diplomatically but firmly. Nigeria should not indulge xenophobia, but it must also not outsource its sovereignty to predatory investors. Any foreign national convicted of illegal mining linked to terror financing should face imprisonment, asset forfeiture and deportation after serving the sentence.

Finally, the military response to insecurity must be joined to economic disruption. Bombing forests while allowing mineral money to flow to terrorists is like mopping the floor while the tap is running. Terror persists because it pays. Make it unprofitable.

Nigeria’s tragedy is not that it is poor. It is that even its wealth has become a weapon against its people. The gold beneath Zamfara’s soil, the lithium in Nasarawa, the minerals in Niger, the tin in Plateau and the other rare-earth minerals elsewhere in Nigeria should build schools, hospitals, roads and livelihoods. Instead, too often, they buy guns, motorcycles, bullets and silence.

•Professor Kperogi, a US-based Nigerian scholar and journalist, is a syndicated columnist.

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