In mid-September, what began as a routine raid by the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) against illegal mining in Minna, the capital of Niger State, turned into one of Nigeria’s most painful tragedies. On September 15 and 16, 2026, NSCDC operatives carried out what the Corps described as a “burst operation” around Lt. Gen. Mohammed Inuwa Wushishi Housing Estate and the Lukoto areas. Scores of children were apprehended and taken into custody. Then, in the early hours of September 17, officers found many of the detainees dead. The then state commandant, Suberu Siyaka Aniviye, issued a statement saying that “scores of the detained suspects were found dead, following a suspected outbreak of disease.” But he did not name the disease or give a definite death toll.
Initial reports put the number of the dead at 33. Later, residents, officials and rights groups raised the figure at 37. Governor Umaru Bago confirmed that many of the dead were children between 14 and 18 years old—children who should have been sitting in classrooms but were instead working in mining pits. Witnesses and grieving families spoke of even younger children.
Rabi Usman lost two sons, Ibrahim Musa, 13, and Abubakar Musa, 11. Some local accounts even mentioned a child as young as seven. Reports from the International Human Rights Commission also revealed that the victims were poor children from the neighbourhood and people displaced from insecure parts of Shiroro Local Government Area who were simply trying to eke out a living.
Illegal gold mining is common in Niger State. Poverty, the displacement of communities by kidnapping and banditry, and the eventual collapse of other means of livelihood have forced many boys and young men into illegal mining.
Arresting miners in Minna is not new.
But dying in a government cell after spending only a night or two in custody is troubling. That is what makes this tragedy so painful.
What really happened inside the cell? There are three different accounts of what led to the deaths. The first is the official account: a suspected disease outbreak. The Corps said the actual cause would be established through medical examination and warned the public against jumping to conclusions.
The second account comes from people who were inside the cell and from families who visited their loved ones the night before the incident. They spoke of overcrowding, unbearable heat and a lack of air.
Detainees were reportedly crammed into a small room with poor ventilation. First, they struggled for space. Then they struggled for breath.They cried. They banged on the door.They called for help.
According to the accounts, their cries were ignored. Some collapsed. By morning, many were dead. A few of those who survived were later taken to hospital.
The third account involves allegations that some detainees were beaten and that a substance was sprayed inside the cell shortly before people began to slump. Those allegations have not been independently proven. But one thing is not in dispute: dozens of children were held in conditions that no detention facility should impose on human beings.
And, tragically, they died while in the custody of the state.
A survivor, Dauda Shehu from Allawa in Shiroro, spoke about the incident from his hospital bed. He said they were not tortured in the sense of systematic beating. What he described instead was unbearable heat and overcrowding. He spoke of gasping for air and screaming for help while officers watched. “They wanted us to die without poisoning or shooting us,” he said. He also questioned the official figures. If only 33 or 37 people died, he asked, where were the others among the 65 people who had been locked inside with him?
That question deserves an answer. So does the heartbreaking account of Mallam Abdullahi, a father who said he took dinner to his son on Wednesday night and found him alive and well. By Thursday morning, he was told that his son was dead. Parents said they had even completed steps towards securing the release of their children on bail, only to be refused or allegedly asked for large sums of money. These are not the words of distant activists. They are the words of parents and relatives who saw, spoke to and ate with their loved ones the night before they died.
The incident was not, as some would want Nigerians to believe, simply another mysterious epidemic in Minna. It was a case of avoidable deaths involving children in the hands of the state.
Many of the boys were breadwinners despite their tender ages. One father, battling illness, reportedly depended on his two sons to buy his medicine. Think about that for a moment. Children who should have been worrying about school, examinations, football, friendships and the ordinary concerns of childhood were instead struggling to provide medicine for an ill father.
Then they were arrested. And some never came home. For a city already struggling with insecurity and poverty, the cell became a powerful symbol: the state can take a child from a mining pit and return him in a body bag. Expectedly, anger spilled into the streets. Hundreds protested. Some public buildings were attacked. Police used live rounds, according to international reports. The state imposed a curfew. Shops, markets, schools and banks closed. The streets became empty. Trust in an internal NSCDC investigation was almost dead.
Parents demanded independent autopsies, the release of the bodies, compensation and prosecution.
“They should tell us what truly killed our children,” one relative cried. That cry should not be ignored.
This case raises deeper concerns, not only about the NSCDC but about the way Nigerian security agencies treat citizens they arrest or take into custody.
The state owes every person in detention a duty of care. A suspect is still a human being. Someone arrested for illegal mining is still a human being. Therefore, overcrowding, extreme heat and ignored cries for help, if established, would raise serious concerns about cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Where death results from a failure to treat people as human beings, the consequences cannot simply be brushed aside.
Illegal mining is an offence. But it is not a licence to warehouse dozens of people overnight without proper medical screening, adequate ventilation, water, or a clear plan for release or charge. Allegations of financial demands for bail and delayed access by families would compound the harm if established.
There is also a familiar pattern in many custodial deaths in Nigeria: official opacity, explanations that come before the facts are fully known, internal investigations, delays and public anger that grows faster than official answers.
The Minna tragedy must not become another example of that pattern.
As usual, government action came quickly on paper. Governor Bago confirmed 37 deaths and announced the suspension of Commandant Aniviye.
The Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, suspended the commandant and twenty other officers. The NSCDC Commandant-General, Prof. Ahmed Abubakar Audi, ordered a high-powered investigation and cautioned against naming a disease before laboratory work had established the cause. President Bola Tinubu directed that the circumstances surrounding the arrests, detention, medical attention and deaths be examined. The police also opened a parallel inquiry. The bodies were eventually released to the families.
But these actions are only the minimum expected from a government confronted with the deaths of 37 people in its custody. Government should publish independent autopsy and forensic results, not merely an internal summary.
If individuals are found to have been responsible for neglect, assault or unlawful confinement that contributed to the deaths, they should face the law. Simply moving officers from one position to another cannot be enough where evidence establishes criminal responsibility. The families must also receive prompt and adequate compensation. They should not have to beg for what the state owes them after failing to keep their children alive. There must also be clear limits on cell occupancy. Detention facilities must have proper ventilation, water and medical checks. Cameras should be installed in holding areas.
But the response must go beyond the cell. Child labour in mining should be treated as a protection and education emergency, not simply as a target for raids. Displacement caused by insecurity and the absence of safe livelihood opportunities will continue to push young people into dangerous mining activities if government policy remains simply: “Arrest them.” The dead must not become another number. The miners of Minna were poor and young. They were also convenient to arrest. That does not make their deaths lawful.
A security agency charged with protecting infrastructure and enforcing mining laws became, for one terrible night, the custodian of a closed room in which children struggled to breathe.
That is the image Nigeria must not forget. The way forward is not another press statement about a “suspected disease.” It is an independent inquiry whose findings are made public.
It is prosecution where the evidence supports it. It is compensation that recognises both the lives lost and the children who should never have been in that cell in the first place. And it is a change in how Nigeria deals with informal mining and the young people trapped within it. Close dangerous mining pits, but provide safer and legal alternatives.
Get the boys back to school. Address the poverty and insecurity that push families into desperation. Otherwise, the pits will remain, the desperation will remain, and another generation will continue to risk its life simply to survive. If these steps are not taken, Minna will eventually be remembered as another number: 37 this time, added to the long list of Nigerians who entered a government facility alive and left dead. The community has already delivered its verdict. The state must now deliver justice—or risk admitting that some lives in its custody still do not count.
Sunday Onyemaechi Eze is a lecturer in the Department of Mass Communication and Head, Internationalisation and Partnership, Coal City University Enugu. You can reach him by email HERE.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
