Niger’s hidden child miners: Thousands more at risk, CSO warns after Minna deaths

By Omeiza Ajayi
ABUJA: Long before the deaths of 37 detainees in the custody of the Nigwr state Command of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps NSCDC in Minna drew national attention to the state’s mining communities, children as young as school age were already working the pits alongside adults, missing out on classrooms and childhoods in exchange for the pittance that illegal mining sites offered their struggling families.
It is this quieter, longer-running crisis that a Minna-based civil society organization the Esteemed-Hub Foundation EHF said it has spent years confronting, and one it insists must not be lost in the outrage now trailing the Minna custodial tragedy.
Its ...