Nigeria: 6 of 37 Dead Niger Miners Were Union Members - Mining Workers' Union

What the report says

A Nigeria mining workers’ union told a Niger State judicial commission that six of the 37 miners reported dead while in the custody of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps were registered union members. The testimony was given in Minna by Musa Adamu Nasiru, national president of the Nigeria Union of Mining Workers, according to Leadership, which reported the hearing via AllAfrica. Nasiru said 10 of the 65 miners arrested by the NSCDC belonged to the union; six died and four survived.

He said he learned of the deaths from Niger State’s commissioner for mineral resources and then sent union representatives to verify the situation. Another witness, Abdulrazak Yusuf Mohammed, chairman of the Niger State chapter of the Miners Association of Nigeria, told the commission he had also been informed of the detentions and later checked the number of people involved. He said 65 people were held, 17 survived and 48 died, though the figures cited in the testimony differ from the earlier union account.

The hearing is part of a state inquiry into the incident involving miners detained by the NSCDC in Niger State. The reporting underscores the scale of the deaths and the role of miners’ organizations in tracing who was affected. Niger State is a major mining area in north-central Nigeria, where disputes over artisanal mining, licensing and security oversight have been recurring issues.