Gold over school: How poverty keeps Niger children in mining pits

For 15-year-old Musa, gold mining started when he was barely 10.
Five years later, the teenager is no longer in school and spends his days looking for gold around Minna, a decision he says was forced on him by poverty and the need to support his family.
“I want to go back to school, but there is no money to send me,” Musa told DAILY POST during an interview on Wednesday, September 16, a day before the death of suspected illegal miners in the custody of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, in Minna.
Musa is one of several young people whose stories show why the battle against illegal mining cannot be reduced to arrests and raids.

Behind the pits are children who h...