Fourteen years later, unregulated gold mining in Zamfara State, Nigeria, is still causing problems for people and the environment
“The bandits came around 2 am in the middle of the night to attack our community. I was heavily pregnant with my baby, then everybody was running helter-skelter..."
Introduction of the issue on ground
Illicit artisanal mining in Zamfara State is now “a tale as old as time.” Zamfara is rich in deposits of gold, zinc, copper, and many other mineral resources. Ironically, it remains one of Nigeria’s many states grappling with socio-economic challenges and is particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts, due to its location in the Sudano-Sahelian region of sub-Saharan Africa.
These persistent issues have led to toxic lead poisoning in the environment and widespread violence and abductions by armed bandit groups, who, coincidentally, illegally control gold mines to fund their operations and procure small arms and light weapons. The consequences of these unregulated actions, as we would find out at the end of this story, are severe environmental and health hazards, food insecurity, and numerous victims of sexual and gender-based violence.
Two years ago, the authors of a study interrogating the relationship between banditry and illegal mining in Nigeria interviewed illegal miners in Bagega, Zamfara State, an area notorious for the armed banditry and illegal mining, and half of them confessed to having unlicensed access to weapons to “protect themselves.”
In a separate study published earlier this year by Abdulnasir Umar, a researcher at the Department of Political Science at the Federal University Gusau, and other co-researchers, they ascertain that there are around 10,000 armed groups of bandits operating in Zamfara that have destroyed 120 villages and have displaced 50,000 people mostly into neighboring Niger Republic. Their study further notes that the armed syndicates are in competition to control and cash in on the gold mines, further exacerbating other vices, such as cattle rustling in connivance with administrative authorities.
Speaking to other sources with knowledge on the issue, The Habibat Project discovers in Zamfara State, a deep-rooted connection among the regular destabilization of the food-production structure of the state, severe environmental degradation, an increasing number of victims of psychological and sexual violence, and the domino effects of the banditry, a now confirmed front for illicit artisanal mining.
This story has been divided into four parts
Illegal mining in Zamfara and how the bandits get the gold
Fate of the women (the victims speak)
Situation report on the environment
A mathematical approach to solving the crisis
Illegal mining in Zamfara and how the bandits get the gold
Gold is a precious resource, but mining and sub-licensing the authority to mine in Nigeria is a responsibility exclusive to the federal government, according to Section 1 (1) of the Nigerian Minerals and Mining Act, 2007 and, in many ways, that is an issue according to Ilias and his co-researchers, who recommend at the end of their study that mining be eliminated from the exclusive list, so as to better aid the regulation of the sector.
ENACT and the US Institute of Peace previously reported that illegal artisanal mining, as is now ubiquitous in Zamfara State, would not be as successful as it is without the influence of criminal foreign entities and other local stakeholders, who fuel the violent conflicts in Zamfara and other resource-abundant areas, including the Mambilla Plateau in Taraba state and the Jos Plateau in Plateau state.
Military resources and state-wide bans on mining have been placed in Zamfara severally, but all to no avail in the dysfunctional state, because the miners resort to violence to cause artificial displacement of people, so that their illegal mining operations can take place without obstructions.
Jibril Lawal, a researcher at the Federal University of Gusau, whose study successfully identified the correlation between illegal mining and banditry, notes, along with other co-authors, that a poor governance structure and a lack of income-generating opportunities for youths are the factors that have led to the situation, where groups of informants and erring security personnel collaborate to ensure that banditry and illegal artisanal mining align to wreak havoc pari passu. The authors also highlight that banditry affects the rural areas in the state the most.
Fate of the women (the victims speak)
We uncovered the domino effect of the problems here, when Khadijah Abdulbasiru, a 36-year-old Zamfara resident, spoke with deep sorrow in Hausa to The Habibat Project about her ordeal, since bandits forced her and her family out of their village.
In her words now translated for accuracy, “the bandits came around 2 am in the middle of the night to attack our community. I was heavily pregnant with my baby, then everybody was running helter-skelter, and when I got to a nearby village which was secure, I was unable to sit. I could not even sit at that time because of how I ran, and my husband assumed it was a forced labor and, immediately, they took me to the hospital. When we got to the hospital, the nurses did not attend to us because my husband did not have money and they could not admit me…”
She eventually got help from a kind samaritan, but ‘kindness’ from hosts in their new town comes at a hefty price, according to Abdulbasiru.
She would later move to a make-shift Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp and meet many banditry-induced displaced people like herself, majorly women and children, where they got food and a place to put their heads for an extended period. After a while, food was no longer forthcoming due to scarcity, so their husbands left them. The men who would stay behind had to go look for menial jobs in neighboring towns but not without putting their wives and kids in the care of resident families in their host town. Another reason for doing so was to get their wives the opportunity to get paid or receive gift items for doing menial jobs like small-scale farming and house chores for their hosts.
This arrangement turned out to be the reason their children were sexually violated.
“Some [of our husbands] went inside the town or to the neighboring towns to look for jobs to do, so the men in the community took advantage of our situation and started having sex with our children, mostly young girls.
“It got to an extent that our hosts started coming to us, wanting to have sex with us, wanting to have something to do with us and, finally, when our own husbands came back and we told them, some would just overlook it and tell their wives not to agree to it, but some will get angry…my own husband got angry and said we should leave there at the time,” Abdulbasiru narrated.
The manager in charge of the temporary camp Abdulbasiru resides, Luqman Garba, confirms that women and children account for over 60% of persons displaced by armed banditry, and that they have been sexually violated, both within and outside the camps. Talking about the spiking rate of sexual violence, he recounted, “...27th of July, a girl was raped and she was just 11 years of age. She was raped by her uncle. We took her to the hospital, and she was admitted there for more than a week, but the man is now in prison, and the girl is getting better.”
The camp management’s response to the issue was to limit the number of persons they would accommodate at a time. “Three to four months ago, some of the displaced persons went back to their areas to farm. If they come back, we don't have a place to accommodate them; because of this lack of electricity, we have more rampant rape [cases]. That's why we limited their numbers. When they come, we would take them into another neighboring IDP, which I manage,” Garba explained.
Another victim, identified only by her first name, Zainab, shared the trauma endured by her family due to the crisis. As a humanitarian worker, she recounted the harrowing story of a woman from an affected village who, devastated by her daughter’s sexual assault by bandits, contemplated taking her own life.
“...imagine that when they came to invade her village, one of the bandits started to rape her daughter in front of her. And she was like — you would have to kill her first for something like that,” she recounted.
When Zainab finally chose to share her own experience, she spoke without pause, unable to hold back.
“They kidnapped my friend's wife and their three-month-old baby. I think that was one of the scariest events that I will say personally made me scared. I have been in the field. I have been in local government. I've seen bandits coming into a town to attack, and soldiers repelling them. I think I've never been scared like the one that happened to my friend's wife and their three-month-old daughter. They came for my friend, but he wasn't around, so they took his wife and his baby and her sister that was staying together with them, and at that moment, I became scared.
“The bandits came to my neighborhood, and my six-year-old sister woke up because of the gunshots. Psychologically, it's not something that I wish on anyone of us. She couldn't go back to sleep and, to date, when you tell her to go and sleep by herself, she'll just tell you that she is scared, and this is how it has been happening. So, it's been affecting people — if not physically, then psychologically; it is something that affects every one of us.”
To date, the fate of women at the hands of bandits in the rural and semi-urban areas of Zamfara State continues to hang in thin air and, unfortunately, for sexual and homely responsibilities, the bandits prefer to abduct women.
Situation report on the environment
There have been no concrete up-to-date reports that put into perspective the current state of contamination and degradation in the state, as most of the coverage focuses on the banditry angle. However, in 2010 the severe lead poisoning in Zamfara attracted international attention, because it was at levels never experienced before in history, and it led to the high emission of lead dust into the environment. The same situation is repeating itself today — the illegal artisanal processing of lead-rich ores to obtain gold.
A study published earlier this year by Sule Aliyu Anka, a researcher at the Department of Biology, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, noted that field investigations during the severe lead poisoning period found excessive lead in surface water, soil, and cultivated crops, and high mercury levels in the air. He noted that the primary source of lead exposure was through the soil, and this affected farming, the major source of livelihood for residents in Zamfara; the lead levels in 100 tested children at the time were unprecedented in Dareta and Yargalma villages of the state.
Since the UN Central Emergency Response Fund intervention, together with other international bodies, the lead levels in the affected villages dropped significantly the year after. However, the CDC in 2016 estimated that there were 40 additional contaminated villages, affecting more than 30,000 residents of the State.
Today’s high level of illegal mining and processing in Zamfara means there is an overlooked, comparable physical devastation of the environment, and a contamination of groundwater, soil, and food for humans and livestock with toxic, non-biodegradable substances, such as lead.
A mathematical approach to solving the crisis
To facilitate an end to illegal mining practices and its associated armed banditry, Lawal and co. in 2023 formulated a “deterministic mathematical model,” which they note holds the answers to ending the nemesis. Their model utilizes two time-dependent controls, namely “controlling the spread of armed banditry using job creation” and “making armed banditry unprofitable.”
“The results obtained on simulations suggest that the application of any of the controls is effective in decreasing the population profile of the informers and the bandits in a finite time,” the researchers concluded.
They concur that organized banditry and illicit mining in Zamfara State stem from the same root causes, with informants, local collaborators, unemployment, and an underdeveloped mining sector converging to fuel the rise in banditry.
As recommendations, they say teamwork between security agencies and local leaders in dealing with displaced persons, illegal mining, and rural banditry should be considered. And that “governments should address the links between unemployment, poverty, and criminality by promoting alternative, non-criminal livelihoods for youths, for instance, skill training centres in both rural and urban areas.”
Some parts of the story were corrected for accuracy in April, 2025
This was a very interesting eye opener, it further proves how Nigeria continues to fail her citizens.
Totally enjoyed reading this one.