How Nigeria’s Mineral Wealth Is Being Handed to China

Nigeria’s Minister for Mines, Dele Henry Alake, prides himself on his re-election as Chairman of the newly formed Africa Minerals Strategy Group. He congratulates himself on the cover of magazines. As a former journalist Minister Alake is good with scripting media stories. He doesn’t have any background in mining or related industries. During President Tinubu’s two terms as Governor of Lagos State it was Alake who managed the Governor’s media as the Commissioner for Information and Strategy.

Since bagging the Ministry for Sold Minerals Development Minister Alake’s primary focus has been on securing large-scale investments and fostering partnerships for local mineral processing. This has led to the development of several lithium processing plants in Nigeria, primarily backed by Chinese investment.

Minister Alake’s emphasis on moving beyond raw material extraction to local processing is a good decision that will support Nigeria’s industrialization and economic diversification. However, favouring Chinese companies and punishing local Nigerian miners is a cruel blow to Nigerians and a step too far in surrendering Nigeria’s natural assets to a foreign power.

Under Minister Alake’s tenure, major Chinese companies such as Canmax Technology, Jiuling Lithium, Avatar New Energy, and Asba have pledged lithium processing facilities in Nigeria.

Since late 2025, Canmax has aggressively secured raw spodumene (lithium ore) to feed its expanding processing faciliies. Canmax Technologies is primarily owned and controlled by its founder and chairman, Mr Pei Zhenhua, alongside his wife, Rong Jianfen. Alake claims Canmax is investing US$200M to develop lithium mining operations in Nigeria, in line with Chinese aggressive moves to control African mineral resources and infrastructure such as ports and railways necessary to exploit the mineral reserves.

In late 2025, Chinese megafirm CATL announced plans to increase its stake in Canmax’s lithium subsidiaries. CATL holds approximately 40 percent of the global EV battery market and almost 70 percent of the NCM (Nickel-Cobalt-Manganese) battery market in China. China as a whole processes approximately 65 percent to 80 percent of the world’s lithium. As the dominant player in China, CATL effectively directs a majority of the lithium hydroxide refined within the country toward its own Gigafactories.

While UK company Jupiter Lithium Ltd’s massive lithium project in Kaduna State reels under the onslaught from armed illegal miners, Alake’s ministry deployed a specialized security unit known as Mining Marshals to safeguard nearby Canmax and Avatar sites from illegal mining activities. No amount of requests from Jupiter for assistance from Minister Alake elicited any support. Rather, Minister Alake revoked key lithium deposits discovered by Jupiter and allowed Chinese mining companies, escorted by Federal Government security, to enter Jupiter’s leases and commence mining and removing the ore mined and stockpiled by Jupiter.

Minister Alake has prioritised diplomatic engagement with Chinese officials to discuss strengthening bilateral relations and find ways to diminish the public attention to China’s involvement in illegal mining in Nigeria.

The mines minister has become a strong and frequent advocate for China’s involvement in Nigeria’s minerals and infrastructure development which has been a hallmark of his many trips to China.

Nigeria has fallen into line with China’s strategy for accessing and controlling Africa’s minerals resources and delivering more markets for Chinese technology and products.

China’s first stage of embedding itself in another nation is the offer to develop a country’s infrastructure; ports, roads, airports and railways. This essential infrastructure often facilitates the development of mineral projects China has chosen.

The second stage is introducing Chinese technology through the project development, especially surveillance technology. China replaces the US-based Global Positioning System (GPS) with China’s BeiDou satellite navigation system and blocks access to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite. In so doing China is able to offer its support for the national government while penetrating Nigeria’s national security. Chinese technology can deliver facial recognition throughout entire cities, even at night.

In Iran several of China’s communications companies including Huawei, facial recognition and ethnicity tracking company Tiandy Technologies and ZTE, often operating through Iranian front companies, have worked with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to provide 360 degrees 24/7 surveillance of Iran’s population. Iran and China have signed a 25-year co-operation agreement that will facilitate the transfer of a range of surveillance and monitoring technologies under the Belt and Road Initiative.

Surveillance of a nation’s populations is now an integral part of China’s program of building a nation’s infrastructure through roads, airports and mines. This provides an unprecedented tool for national governments to retain power and be manipulated by China.

…Steven Kefas is a conflict reporter with keen interest in mining and solid minerals.

Blood on the Hills: Thirty Silenced at Naridon While Nigeria’s Army Watched From Three Kilometres Away

By Steven Kefas

(Kaduna), Terrorists killed thirty people, eleven of them children, during a three-hour rampage in Naridon, Kaduna State, on Monday morning, just kilometers from an army base that never responded.

A Village Wakes to Gunfire

Naridon, a Christian farming settlement tucked into the hills of Kamaru Ward in Kaduna State’s Kauru Local Government Area, had gone to sleep like any other Sunday night. By the time dawn broke on Monday, 27 July 2026, thirty of its people lay dead. Eleven were children. The youngest, Geoffrey Monday, was three years old. The oldest, Kaka Umaru, had lived eighty-seven years before gunmen cut his life short in the compound where he had likely been born.

For close to three hours, armed men locals described as Fulani militants moved through Naridon unchallenged, according to Rev Fr Mark Bissan, the Catholic priest of Kamaru Chawai who compiled the parish’s account of the dead, injured and destroyed. They shot residents in their homes and in the open, torched shops and houses, and desecrated musical instruments inside the community church. Seven more people were wounded, among them a five-year-old girl and a seven-year-old boy. Whole family lines were nearly wiped out in a single night: the Emmanuel household alone lost five children, from five-year-old Irimiya to thirteen-year-old Deborah.

A young child killed during the attack. Credit: Fr Bissan

A Response That Never Came

What makes Naridon’s grief sharper is geography. A Nigerian Army forward operating base sits barely three kilometres from the village, close enough that soldiers there could plausibly have heard the gunfire. No help arrived while the attack was underway, and none had arrived when Middle Belt Times visited the community on Wednesday, forty-eight hours after the killing began. There was not a single security operative on the ground, even as residents relayed threats from the attackers themselves that they intended to return and, in their words, to finish what they started. Neighbouring communities say they have received similar warnings.

Thirty bodies were taken to an embalming facility in Zangon Kataf, where grieving relatives now wait to bury their dead. The Kaduna State government has yet to deliver relief materials to a community that has lost its breadwinners, its children and its sense of safety in one night. This is despite the state government mandating the state emergency management agency to deliver relief 72 hours ago.

President Bola Tinubu has, as he has done after previous massacres, ordered that those responsible be identified and prosecuted. Survivors of Naridon have reason to doubt that order will be carried out. This is not the first attack their area has suffered, and it will not be remembered as an isolated tragedy. On 16 June 2026, nine people were killed in nearby Ungwan Magaji by attackers survivors identified as Fulani ethnic militia. Less than a year earlier, on 25 August 2025, eight people were killed in Ungwan Rimi, in the same local government area, reportedly by the same attackers. Disturbingly, some of those arrested in connection with the 2025 attack were reportedly released without ever facing prosecution, and survivors of the June 2026 killing say they recognised those same men among their attackers. Naridon is now the deadliest single attack recorded in Kaduna state since the current federal and state administrations took office on 29 May 2023.

A Pattern the World Keeps Missing

Naridon did not happen in a vacuum, and neither did the silence around it. A six-year study released on 30 June 2026 by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA), titled Four Times Boko Haram? How the World Misreads Nigeria’s Violence, documented 79,323 people killed across the country between 2020 and 2025, more than 42,000 of them civilians. The study found that Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province, the two groups most associated with Nigerian terrorism in Western reporting, together accounted for just twelve percent of civilian deaths. Armed groups the report classifies as Fulani Terror Groups were responsible for forty-four percent, roughly four times the combined toll of Boko Haram and ISWAP.

That imbalance has not been matched by attention from Washington. American policy and media coverage of Nigeria’s violence has overwhelmingly tracked the North-East insurgency, the theatre where Boko Haram and ISWAP operate, while the killing fields of Kaduna, Plateau, Taraba, Niger, Kwara and Benue states draw comparatively little notice. When American forces did act, striking suspected terrorist positions in Sokoto’s Bauni Forest on Christmas Day, the operation targeted the North-West’s militant enclaves rather than the networks terrorising Middle Belt farming communities. The strikes have had no discernible effect on the violence closer to Naridon. If anything, attacks on Christian farming communities in Kaduna, Benue, Taraba and Plateau intensified in the months that followed.

A destroyed building in Naridon. Credit: Fr Bissan

Plateau and Benue Bleed in Parallel

Naridon’s grief is being lived out simultaneously elsewhere in the Middle Belt. In Benue State’s Otukpo Local Government Area, gunmen have carried out a string of attacks through July, culminating in a raid on Efeyi-Ugboju community that has left at least fourteen people dead this week alone, part of a wave of Otukpo violence that has killed dozens of farmers and villagers since early July. In Plateau State, the killing has followed a near-identical script: armed Fulani militia have shot Christian vigilantes standing unarmed watch in Barkin Ladi, wiped out a family of nine in Kum village, and killed community leaders who had publicly appealed for peace. Survivors and rights monitors describe the same features again and again, attacks late at night, army positions nearby that do not respond in time, and communities left to bury their own dead without government support.

A Government More Focused on Washington Than on Kauru

While villages like Naridon wait for security and relief, Nigeria’s federal government has directed considerable resources toward its image in the United States. Abuja signed a six-month, nine-million-dollar contract with the Washington lobbying firm DCI Group, brokered through Kaduna-based Aster Legal on behalf of the National Security Adviser, to persuade American policymakers that Nigeria is not turning a blind eye to the killing of Christians and to preserve Washington’s redesignation of Nigeria as a security partner rather than a Country of Particular Concern. Critics in the US Congress have called the spending a culture of denial, more concerned with managing perception abroad than protecting the villages where the killing is actually happening.

For the people of Naridon, none of that diplomacy has translated into a soldier at their gate. Thirty coffins are being prepared in Kafanchan. Children who survived the attack are sleeping without their siblings. And a community that buried its dead from June 2026, and August 2025 before that, is now bracing for a third round, because the men who threatened to come back have given no one reason to believe they were bluffing.

…Steven Kefas is a conflict reporter with over a decade experience covering the crisis in the Middle Belt

“The Blanket at the Door”: Inside Southern Kaduna Villages Where Bandits Have Become the Government

By Steven Kefas for Middle Belt Times

Editor’s Note: This report contains descriptions of violence and sexual abuse that some readers may find distressing.

In a remote community in Kajuru Local Government Area of Kaduna State, a blanket left at the entrance of a house is not a harmless mistake. It is a terrifying message.

It means an armed terrorist has chosen that home for the night. The husband must sleep outside. The wife or sometimes a daughter will be sexually assaulted inside the house. The children are often forced to witness the ordeal in silence.

For one father of five, this has become the unbearable reality of life under the rule of heavily armed terrorists many believed to be of Fulani origin.

His identity and the name of his community are being withheld for security reasons.

The man recently escaped the community after spending an entire week secretly making his way out. What he recounted paints a chilling picture of villages where the Nigerian state has effectively disappeared and criminal gangs now determine every aspect of daily life.

Veteran journalist Reuben Buhari, who first documented the survivor’s account on his Facebook page, wrote:

“This is the back of someone who lives in a community that has entered into an agreement with Fulani kidnappers following repeated attacks. The community is now in its third year living alongside bandits.”

To protect the survivor, Bihari deliberately photographed only his back.

According to the survivor’s testimony, the so-called “agreement” was not voluntary. It was born out of repeated attacks and the absence of effective protection, leaving villagers with what they believed was a choice between death and submission.

But the price of survival has been devastating.

As Buhari reported:

“The man you see is married with 5 children, but his wife doesn’t belong to him since the agreement was entered into. The kidnappers sleep with her whenever they feel the urge, sometimes while the children watch. If he protests, he will be shot. The same thing happened to all the women in the village. If a kidnapper leaves a blanket in front of your house or drops a stick, it’s a sign that he will sleep in your house with your wife or daughter that day, while you sleep outside.”

The alleged abuses extend far beyond sexual violence.

According to the account, villagers live under a rigid system of rules imposed by the armed groups. They cannot leave without permission. Anyone caught attempting to flee risks execution. Carrying a travelling bag invites suspicion and searches.

Farmers are permitted to cultivate their land, but a quarter of every harvest reportedly belongs to the terrorists.

Ownership of everyday items is also tightly controlled.

“They aren’t allowed to own a phone,” Buhari wrote. “If you are caught, you will be shot.”

The same restrictions reportedly apply to torchlights, new motorcycles and even new clothes. Any valuable possession can simply be taken by the armed men.

“They aren’t allowed to own a machete; only hoes and diggers are permitted for farming,” Buhari added.

The restrictions also isolate the communities from the outside world.

According to the survivor, men are generally forbidden from visiting neighbouring communities that have not entered into similar arrangements with the terrorists. When goods must be purchased from outside, women are sent instead. If they fail to return, the consequences are fatal for those left behind.

“If the wives don’t return, the husbands and children will be shot,” Buhari quoted the survivor as saying.

Young men face another grim reality.

Rather than merely living under occupation, they are allegedly forced to participate in criminal operations.

“Youths in the community are forced to accompany the bandits to steal or kidnap,” Buhari wrote. “They are forced to ride the motorcycle while the bandits sit behind with guns. If you refuse to go, you are shot.”

The effect, according to the testimony, is that entire communities have become captives, unable to resist, unable to flee, and increasingly trapped within a system of coercion.

Religious life has also been severely disrupted.

“They can’t hold any church service on Sunday unless the bandits are not around,” Buhari reported.

Essential public services have likewise collapsed.

Schools no longer function because teachers have fled. Primary Healthcare Centres have reportedly been abandoned, leaving residents without access to education or basic medical care.

Fear itself has become a weapon.

According to the survivor, the armed groups occasionally execute members of the community simply to reinforce obedience and demonstrate the consequences of resistance.

Reflecting on the testimony, Buhari concluded:

“Everything is controlled by the kidnappers. Sometimes they pick people from the community and shoot them to show what will happen to anyone who disobeys them.”

The veteran journalist stressed that what he published represented only a fraction of the survivor’s account.

“This is just a summary of the chilling things this man said,” he wrote.

Perhaps most alarming is his claim that the problem extends far beyond a single village.

“There are more than 20 communities in Kajuru LGA, about 30 in Kachia LGA, and dozens in Chikun LGA that have entered into such agreements with these kidnappers and are living under harsh conditions. Though the conditions vary, but most have no freedom at all.”

Middle Belt Times has in recent time  independently verified similar allegations as the ones contained in the survivor’s testimony. It is also worthy of note that repeated attacks, kidnappings and mass displacement have been documented across parts of Kajuru, Kachia and Chikun Local Government Areas over several years by Nigerian authorities, civil society organisations and media reports. The January 18, 2026 abduction of 177 worshippers from three Churches during Sunday service in Kurmin Wali village in Kajuru local government area is one of such attacks.

This survivor’s account reflects conditions in some of these communities. It also raises urgent questions about the humanitarian situation facing thousands of rural residents who may be living under the effective control of armed criminal groups.

Behind every statistic is a family like his, a father forced to surrender his dignity to stay alive, a mother robbed of her bodily autonomy, children growing up surrounded by violence, and communities cut off from the protection and freedoms guaranteed under the Nigerian Constitution.

For this unnamed father, escape was possible only after days of careful planning.

Many others, according to his testimony, remain behind, waiting for the next blanket to appear at their door.

Ladduga: How a Controversial Settlement Became a Symbol of Southern Kaduna’s Security Crisis

By Mike Agwam

Ladduga is a land where the government acquired for the purpose of animal husbandry, covering 73, hectares of land which was forcefully taken away from the indigenous people of southern Kaduna to give Fulanis.

For those who may not be knowledgeable about the place, let me vividly give a description of the place, If you are traveling to southern Kaduna before reaching kachia there is railway crossing just some few meters before the rail line, there’s a feeder road that connects with the high way by the left hand side, it is this road that will lead you to Laduga.

No sooner government acquired this land it became a settlement area for the Fulanis, Fulani of all race came and settled in this place, the disturbing phenomenon is that little do southern Kaduna people knew that this town will metamorphosed to be the den of criminals and a safe haven for Fulani terrorists.

During Patrick Yakowa reign there was a time the military had an intelligent report about the activities of these criminals, they were all rounded up in the night in a stink operation by the military, where amongst those arrested was the leader of the community. He was found complicit.

Laduga is known for being a notorious place for harbouring Fulani terrorists, they moved in the night go to neighbouring town attack people in their sleep, massacre, burn their houses and disappear in thin and back to base, which is Laduga. There was a time the men doing this evil act went out and never returned and their women came out protesting asking where there husbands were.

It was in this condition that Elrufai came to power, having every security report about the place, instead of taking measures to end the horrendous activities of his people, he continue to fan their ego by elevating the local community leader to a District head. He did not stop at that, he acquired more land and added to Laduga community, I was informed that the vast portion of land he grabbed belongs to the Ikulu people. Their ancestral land.

Elrufai did everything humanly possible to defend the Fulani even telling lies that 150 Fulanis were killed by Adara youths and buried in a shallow grave, when investigated by the military it turnout it was a lie from the pit of hell.
Some of his people still praise him for dealing decisively with southern Kaduna people. “Ya ji wa arna”, meaning he has dealt with the infidel.

Fees Before Mines: How Nigeria’s Mining Ministry Became Its Own Worst Enemy

The Ministry of Solid Minerals Development is celebrating record revenue but the available data suggests the money is coming predominantly from licence fees rather than from mines. The pattern, if confirmed by full-year data, would reveal a regulatory regime that may be pricing out legitimate investors, driving production underground, and suppressing the royalties Nigeria desperately needs. Granular verification is hampered by the absence of comprehensive public data — a transparency failure that is itself part of the problem.

Special Report  |  Nigeria Mining Monitor

Nigeria’s solid minerals sector generated N68 billion in revenue in 2025, a figure that Minister Dele Alake’s team has trumpeted as proof of a transformed industry. The headline may be accurate but the story behind it is not the one being told.

A reading of the government’s own data, cross-referenced with international trade records and fee schedules from Australia and Canada, raises serious questions about whether this sector’s revenue growth is built on administrative charges rather than productive mining. Royalties — the income stream that actually reflects minerals being mined, processed, and sold appear to remain a structurally suppressed component of total collections. Meanwhile, the Ministry’s fee policies appear to have created conditions that systematically favour illegal operators over legitimate ones, shrunk the pool of formal licence holders, and allowed substantial volumes of minerals and metals to leave the country without confirmed royalty payments. Due to limitations in the granularity and timeliness of data published by the Mining Cadastre Office (MCO) and the Ministry, full verification of the scale of these problems is not currently possible. This opacity is itself a governance concern.

Taxing the paperwork, not the production

In a well-functioning mining jurisdiction, royalties dominate revenue. They are, by definition, the state’s share of its natural wealth — calculated as a percentage of the value of minerals actually extracted and sold. Licence fees are secondary: legitimate cost-recovery for administrative services. Nigeria’s available data suggests this logic has been inverted — though the absence of a consistent, publicly published annual breakdown of fees versus royalties prevents a definitive structural conclusion.

In December 2025, the Ministry’s own FAAC submission recorded fees of N2.59 billion against royalties of just N1.58 billion — meaning fees accounted for approximately 62% of that month’s solid minerals revenue. This is the most recent month for which disaggregated data is publicly available. The Ministry does not consistently publish monthly or annual revenue breakdowns distinguishing fees from royalties across the full year, making it impossible to confirm with certainty whether December’s ratio is representative or exceptional. The available partial-year data suggests the pattern is broadly consistent across 2025, but the MCO’s data collection practices do not permit the kind of longitudinal verification that would put this beyond reasonable dispute. For a country sitting atop gold, lithium, tin, and dozens of other commercially significant minerals, even a single-month ratio of this kind is a governance alarm bell.

The royalty problem is compounded by how royalties are calculated. Nigeria’s official “approved market value” for each mineral, the base on which the royalty percentage is applied appears not to be updated to reflect actual market prices. Based on analysis published in November 2025 by Regan van Rooy, a specialist in Nigerian mining royalty valuations, the approved value for gold is approximately USD 750 per ounce. If this USD 750/oz benchmark remains operative, or anything close to it, the gap with market rates is extraordinary: the London spot price in late 2025 was approximately USD 4,138 per ounce. Even if every gold miner in Nigeria declared every gram honestly, royalties would be collected on less than one-fifth of the mineral’s actual worth. Whether this results from deliberate policy, administrative inertia, or a failure to update administrative instruments in line with market movements, the practical outcome is the same: the royalty base is structurally disconnected from real values.

Related Fact: 62 % is the Proportion of December 2025 solid minerals revenue derived from administrative fees, not production royalties, based on FAAC submission data. In a well-governed sector, this ratio should be significantly reversed. Full-year disaggregated data is not publicly available to confirm whether this month is representative of the annual pattern.

The July 2024 fee shock: a revenue surge with a hidden ceiling

On 4 July 2024, Minister Alake announced sweeping new rates across 268 items in the mining sector. The Mining Lease annual service fee jumped to N1,250,000. A new Mining Lease application was pegged at N3,000,000. Exploration licence fees rose sharply. And a punitive late-renewal penalty structure was introduced: N1.5 million for an exploration licence renewal paid late, and N3,000,000 equal to the original application fee for a late Mining Lease renewal.

The revenue effect was immediate and substantial. Collections rose from N6 billion in 2023 to N38 billion in 2024 and reached N68 billion in 2025. The Ministry hailed this as transformative. But context matters. The 2025 budget target set for the Ministry was N36.88 billion, a figure so conservative it was exceeded by April. The Ministry’s own officials had publicly projected over N70 billion for the year; the actual result of N68.1 billion fell short of even that revised target. More importantly, the surge appears to have been driven primarily by fee collection, not by a measurable expansion in mining output.

That dial has a ceiling. Fee schedules cannot be increased indefinitely. When charges reach the point at which formal operation becomes economically irrational compared with informal activity, operators make a rational choice: they go underground. The Ministry has not published exit surveys, licence surrender analyses, or operator feedback data that would allow a precise determination of whether this tipping point has been reached. The circumstantial evidence — rising revocations, documented illegal operations, and the divergence between royalty collections and export volumes is consistent with the hypothesis that the tipping point has been reached. But in the absence of behavioural data, this remains a well-grounded inference rather than a demonstrated fact.

The lithium gap: Nigeria’s missing billions

No single data series raises more serious governance questions than the contrast between Nigeria’s royalty collections and Chinese customs records.

According to the General Administration of Customs of the People’s Republic of China (GACC), as reported by Shanghai Metals Market and Mysteel, Nigeria has become one of the world’s major suppliers of spodumene — the primary ore from which lithium is refined for use in electric vehicle batteries. In July 2025, Chinese customs recorded 217,000 tonnes of spodumene imported from Nigeria in a single month. Over the January–September 2025 period, arrivals from Nigeria appear to have exceeded 800,000 tonnes.

This “Mirror Data” of Chinese customs country-of-origin data should be treated as indicative rather than definitive proof of royalty liability. It does not account for possible re-exports, stockpiled material assembled from multiple sources, timing lags between shipment and royalty assessment, or informal cross-border aggregation. What it does establish is a very large physical volume of spodumene identified by Chinese importers as originating in Nigeria — a volume that warrants a credible, transparent reconciliation against Nigeria’s own royalty collection records. No such reconciliation has been published.

At Nigeria’s official royalty rate of N9,500 per tonne for spodumene, the July shipments alone would imply a royalty exposure of approximately N2.06 billion, more than Nigeria’s total royalty collection across all minerals in December 2025. The implied royalty exposure on nine months of spodumene exports would approach N7.6 billion. Whether these amounts were collected, deferred, or lost is unknown because the Ministry does not publish operator-level or mineral-level royalty data in the detail that would enable verification.

Is the lack of data from Nigeria’s Ministry of Mines intentional so as to thwart verification or is it simply very poor management?

The explanation for any gap is not complicated. A 2024 Associated Press investigation documented Chinese-funded operations employing artisanal miners including children as young as six at illegal sites across Nasarawa and other lithium-rich northern states. Dozens of arrests of illegal operators, including Chinese nationals convicted in Ilorin in April 2024, confirm that the activity is widespread and systematic. SBM Intelligence, a Lagos-based research firm, has documented links between illegal mining revenues and insecurity in affected regions; their reporting suggests a connection to the financing of armed actors, though the specific financial mechanisms and quantified flows have not been independently verified and this claim should be read accordingly. The minerals are leaving Nigeria. Whether, and to what extent, the royalties are being collected remains unanswerable given current data availability.

Related Fact: N7.6bn+ is the Estimated royalty exposure on Nigerian spodumene recorded arriving in China (Jan–Sep 2025), based on GACC data and Nigeria’s official royalty rate of N9,500/tonne. Whether these amounts were assessed and collected cannot be confirmed from publicly available data. Total royalties collected from ALL minerals in the same period appear to be a small fraction of this figure.

Paying more, getting less: the international comparison

A comparison with Western Australia and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and British Columbia, three of the world’s most active and investor-friendly mining jurisdictions, is instructive, though it requires contextual qualification. Nigeria’s fee structure looks not merely expensive but economically incoherent when set against these benchmarks, even accounting for differences in development stage and institutional capacity.

A Nigerian Mining Lease application costs approximately USD 1,875 at current exchange rates. The equivalent application fee in Western Australia is AUD 669 (approximately USD 426), that is less than a quarter of Nigeria’s charge. In Ontario, the equivalent is CAD 90 (approximately USD 65). In exchange for these modest fees, investors in WA and Canada receive: free, comprehensive digital geological databases covering decades of exploration data; publicly searchable, real-time tenement registers; 21-year Mining Lease terms renewable as of right; and regulatory frameworks where non-payment results in forfeiture, not criminal referral to an anti-corruption agency.

Nigeria offers comparatively little in return for fees. Its geological map costs N300,000. Its tenure register, the eMC+ system, has limited public accessibility and long periods offline. Geological survey data — the single most important input to any investment decision in mining  is thin relative to the country’s endowment. It is fair to note that Western Australia’s and Canada’s geological databases reflect decades of public investment that Nigeria did not make in the same period. The gap in data quality is partly a legacy issue, not purely a matter of current policy choice. That contextual point does not, however, explain why Nigeria’s current fees significantly exceed those jurisdictions’ charges while delivering demonstrably fewer services with attendant far greater risks.

Perhaps most structurally damaging is what Nigeria’s fees do not require: actual exploration work. In WA, Ontario, and BC, a licence is maintained by demonstrated expenditure on geological work, drilling, sampling, geophysics — that adds to the nation’s knowledge. Dormant licences lapse naturally. In Nigeria, licences are maintained by cash payment alone, with no requirement that any work occur. The Ministry has not published data on what proportion of licence holders have conducted exploration expenditure in any given year, which makes it impossible to quantify directly how widespread dormant licence-holding is. The absence of such a requirement, however, is structural and visible in the regulatory framework itself.

Related Fact: Nigeria’s fees are 29x Cananda’s. Nigeria’s Mining Lease application fee (USD 1,875) relative to Ontario’s equivalent (CAD 90 / USD 65). Nigerian operators receive no comparable geological database, limited tenure security, and face criminal referral for late payment. WA and Canadian fees reflect different development contexts, but the gap in cost-to-service ratio remains material.

3,794 revocations: an industry under pressure

Since President Tinubu’s administration took office in May 2023, the Ministry has revoked 3,794 mining licences. The waves came in three tranches: 1,633 in November 2023, 924 in May 2024, and 1,263 in September 2025. The primary trigger in every case was failure to pay annual service fees.

To understand the administrative scale of this, consider that the Mining Cadastre Office issued approximately 2,249 mineral titles in the entire year of 2023. Revocations since May 2023 therefore substantially exceed a full year’s worth of new grants. The Ministry may argue that many revoked licences were dormant, speculative, or non-compliant, legacy titles that added little productive value to the sector and whose removal represents regulatory hygiene rather than suppression however without production, employment, or investment data disaggregated by licence holder, it is not possible to determine definitively what proportion of revoked titles were genuinely active. The MCO does not publish this breakdown. What can be said is that more revocations are occurring than new licences are being issued, and that the compounding effect of punitive late-payment penalties makes recovery of title economically prohibitive for many operators who might otherwise have continued.

In Western Australia or Ontario, fee structures are calibrated to be sustainable for operating companies. Tenements are forfeited, not revoked with EFCC referral threats when operators cannot continue. Individual cases go through formal adjudication. The process is designed to preserve productive tenure in active hands, not to punish operators for cash flow difficulties. Nigeria’s approach creates the opposite incentive structure, regardless of intent.

For any international investor conducting due diligence, the combination of high fees, punitive late-payment penalties, and a track record of mass revocations represents a material risk factor. No investor surveys or documented deal withdrawals are cited here that data has not been published by the Ministry or by any independent body but the structural risk profile described is consistent with what deters capital in comparable emerging-market jurisdictions.

The transparency problem no one wants to name

Underlying all of the above is a failure of transparency that makes every other problem harder to solve. The IMF, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, and every major mining jurisdiction treat granular revenue disclosure as a baseline governance requirement. Published production volumes by mineral and by operator, royalty declarations verifiable against independent trade data, licence registers open to public scrutiny — these are not luxuries. They are the tools that deter underreporting, build investor confidence, and allow policymakers to detect when a system is broken.

Nigeria’s Ministry does not consistently publish royalty data broken down by mineral type or by operator. The royalty base values which determine how much is owed per tonne are set administratively at prices that appear significantly disconnected from market rates, with no published methodology for how or when they are updated. It is acknowledged that some data is available through EITI submissions and FAAC reporting, and that these represent genuine improvements over earlier periods. The problem is not total absence of data, but insufficient granularity, consistency, and timeliness to allow external verification of whether royalties are being correctly assessed and collected. The MCO’s data collection practices do not currently support the kind of mineral-level, operator-level reconciliation that would make the sector’s royalty performance auditable.

A structural change is underway. As of January 2026, royalty collection has transitioned from the Ministry to the Federal Inland Revenue Service, now operating as the Nigeria Revenue Service under new tax laws. Both institutions have pledged collaboration and transparency. The intent is encouraging, and the separation of revenue collection from the regulating Ministry is consistent with international best practice. However, institutional reorganisation without data transparency is a rearrangement, not a reform. The transfer of collection responsibility to the Treasury does not, by itself, address the fundamental problem: Nigeria cannot yet reliably determine how much mineral is being extracted, by whom, and whether correct royalties are being paid. That will require investment in the information infrastructure, production monitoring, operator reporting obligations, and independent verification that neither institution has yet committed to provide, aside from the failed eMC+ system with its limited public accessibility and ongoing “upgrade” costs.

The verdict

Nigeria’s Ministry of Solid Minerals Development set out to transform a neglected sector. It has instead constructed a regulatory regime that charges heavily to hold ground, punishes those who struggle to pay, offers little in return in terms of data or security, and leaves the front door open for operators who have no intention of paying anything at all.

The result is visible in the data that is available: fees apparently outpacing royalties in the months for which disaggregated figures have been published; substantial volumes of lithium leaving the country with royalty collections that appear to fall far short of the implied liability; nearly 4,000 licences revoked in two years; and a sector whose headline revenue growth is almost entirely a product of administrative price increases rather than expanding output. The absence of more comprehensive public data, annual fee-versus-royalty breakdowns, operator-level royalty declarations, production volumes by mineral, means that the full extent of these problems cannot be established with precision. That absence is not a reason to dismiss the evidence that does exist; it is a governance failure in its own right.

Nigeria has extraordinary mineral endowments. It will not unlock their value by pricing legitimate operators into illegality. The path to a productive, revenue-generating mining sector runs through stable tenure, market-linked royalties, transparent data, and a fee structure that rewards development rather than punishing it. The January 2026 transfer of royalty collection to the Treasury is a step in the right direction. It will only matter if it is accompanied by the information systems and disclosure standards that make royalty compliance auditable and royalty performance visible.

Until the Ministry and the Nigeria Revenue Service together build that infrastructure and publish the results, the minerals will keep leaving the country and the royalties will remain, as they are today, largely unaccounted for.

The Ministry’s responsibility to develop Nigeria’s mining potential and transform Nigeria’s oil and gas economy into a clean energy and mining economy will remain just that — an unrealised potential.

Steven Kefas is a Nigerian journalist, activist, and mining enthusiast with nearly a decade of experience following Nigeria’s mining sector.

Sources and methodology

This analysis draws on MSMD monthly FAAC submissions (January–December 2025); the Nigeria Mining Cadastre Office 2023 Annual Report; GACC spodumene import data as reported by Shanghai Metals Market and Mysteel (January–September 2025); the MSMD July 2024 rate schedule (268-item fee revision); DEMIRS Western Australia Fees and Charges 2024–25 (effective 1 July 2024); Ontario O. Reg. 65/18 and O. Reg. 113/91; BC Mineral Tenure Act Regulation; Regan van Rooy analysis of Nigerian royalty valuations (November 2025); and reporting from THISDAY, Premium Times, AllAfrica, PBS NewsHour, Associated Press, SBM Intelligence, and Business & Human Rights Resource Centre. Exchange rates: USD 1 = N1,600; AUD 1 ≈ USD 0.637; CAD 1 ≈ USD 0.725. The approved gold royalty value of approximately USD 750/oz is drawn from the Regan van Rooy analysis; the Ministry has not published a current royalty valuation schedule and has not confirmed or denied this figure in response to requests for information. Full-year disaggregated fee-versus-royalty data for 2024–2025 has not been published by the Ministry or MCO; the December 2025 FAAC figure is the most recent month for which this breakdown is available.

THE UNTOLD GENOCIDE: How Political Islamists and Fulani Militias Are Systematically Targeting Muslims and Christians in Nigeria

By Khaleed Yazeed

The Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA) has just released a report that should shake the foundations of every government, every international organization, and every conscience that claims to care about human life. Between 2020 and 2025, Nigeria recorded 79,323 deaths linked to terrorism-related violence. That is an average of 36 people killed every single day. Of these, 42,033 were innocent civilians, ordinary men, women, and children who woke up one morning and never saw the sunset.

The data from ORFA reveals a devastating truth that the Fulani elite have spent years trying to bury. Armed groups classified as “Fulani Terror Groups” were responsible for a staggering 44 percent of all civilian deaths, amounting to 18,577 killings. In contrast, Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), the groups that have dominated Western headlines and consumed international counter-terrorism resources, combined accounted for only 12 percent of civilian deaths . As ORFA Senior Research Analyst Frans Vierhout stated: “Violence linked to Fulani militias is the dominant force behind Nigeria’s death toll. The Western preoccupation with Boko Haram is, at best, misleading. Nigeria is incubating a terror network which the outside world has yet to acknowledge”.

The Attack on Muslims by Political Islamists

The report makes clear that Muslim civilians are not spared from this violence. Between 2020 and 2025, 13,224 Muslims were killed and 15,272 Muslims were abducted. These are not accidental casualties; they are the result of a systematic campaign by Fulani militias and political Islamists who are willing to sacrifice even their co-religionists in their quest for land, power, and dominance.

The ORFA report documented 34,773 civilian abductions during the six-year period, with Fulani Terror Groups accounting for 43 percent of these kidnappings, and Unidentified Terror Groups responsible for 49 percent . The report also found that 75 percent of civilians killed died during attacks on farming communities, raids that involved abduction, sexual violence, and the systematic destruction of homes and livelihoods. These are not isolated incidents; they are part of a coordinated campaign.

According to security expert Steven Kefas, the Fulani Ethnic Militia’s activities are methodical and low-profile, with 79 percent of attacks being land-based raids on farming settlements that focus on abduction, killings, sexual violence, and arson. The violence is predominantly concentrated in the North-Central zone and Southern Kaduna, areas that have suffered significantly from Fulani attacks while military resources are concentrated in the North-East and North-West . This is not a security failure; it is a security choice.

The Captivity by Creed System

ORFA’s research revealed a disturbing pattern they call “Captivity by Creed”, a system where Muslim and Christian hostages are treated differently from the moment of capture. According to the report, Muslim captives generally face lower ransom demands and less violence, while Christian captives face higher ransom demands, a greater likelihood of execution, and in the case of women, a higher risk of sexual violence. As Steven Kefas stated: “From the moment of capture, Muslim and Christian hostages enter different realities. It is not about individual captors. It is a system that is consistent across multiple states, armed groups and years of survivor testimony”.

This is not a random pattern; it is a deliberate system of sorting by creed. The 2025 USCIRF report confirmed that violence by Fulani militants caused the highest number of deaths among all religious communities in Nigeria, with Fulani militants targeting Christian farming communities in the Middle Belt and increasingly the South, burning homes and churches, and kidnapping, raping, and murdering. Even Muslim civilians are not spared, as Fulani militants and political Islamists have been known to attack Muslim communities that resist their domination or refuse to support their agenda.

The Role of Political Islamists and the Izala Movement

The eyewitness account in the ORFA report points to a specific driver: the Izala movement, which spread from Saudi Arabia and combined with Fulani ethnic supremacy to capture the political establishment in the North . According to the eyewitness: “The Izala movement, combined with Fulani ethnic supremacy, captured the political establishment in the north. It led to the formation of an ethno-religious terrorist group called the Fulani Ethnic Militia, which began to reign terror on non-Fulani Muslim civilians and Christian civilians alike”.

A 2023 study by Nigerian scholars on the herder-farmer conflict in Plateau state found that the great majority of indigenous people from non-Fulani ethnic groups believe that the motives for violence by Fulani herders are land grabbing, jihad, and Fulanization, rather than cattle rustling or resource conflict. This is not about grazing; it is about conquest. The same study found that Fulani leaders in Plateau state have expressed the view that Muslim leaders who support peace with Christians are not “true believers” and have incited their followers to target non-Muslims.

The Government’s Complicity and Silence

The Nigerian government has been complicit in covering up this violence. According to the ORFA report, the government has been covering up the attacks as “communal clashes” due to climate change. Ethnoreligious violence puts Nigeria in a bad light internationally, scaring off investors and limiting foreign aid . As reported by Genocide Watch, Church leaders and analysts have criticized the government and military for consistently describing Fulani jihadist massacres of Christians as “communal clashes” or “herder farmer disputes,” ignoring the explicit religious targeting. Rev. David Azzaman sharply noted: “The military refers to these attacks as communal clashes or ‘farmer/herder clashes’… What is going on… is genocide”.

In December 2016, then-Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai made a public admission that he had identified the killers as Fulani, including foreign Fulani fighters from Cameroon, Niger Republic, Chad, Mali, and Senegal. Rather than pursuing legal accountability, El-Rufai disclosed that his government sent emissaries across borders to appeal to these individuals to stop the killings because he, as governor, was Fulani like them. A governor openly admitting that he is appeasing killers because of ethnic kinship is not governance; it is surrender.

The International Complicity

Yet despite the rising toll, Fulani militias have vanished from international terror rankings like the Global Terrorism Index (GTI). According to Kefas, their violence is mis-categorized as “communal” or “ethnic” conflict, making it invisible to international security frameworks and humanitarian aid. The GTI uses specific criteria to define terrorist incidents, but the framing of Fulani militia violence as communal or ethnic clashes rather than terrorism has contributed to their exclusion from global terror rankings, which has real-world consequences affecting international aid allocation, security cooperation, and diplomatic pressure.

Save the Persecuted Christians, via Truth Nigeria, emphasized that global advocacy is undermined when Western governments echo religious neutral narratives. Dede Laugesen stated: “Nothing will change until the Nigerian people unite with one voice… It’s not climate change… This is genocide pure and simple. All who try to explain it otherwise are culpable”.

Conclusion: The Awakening Has Begun

The ORFA report has been submitted to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief. The question now is whether the world will act, or whether it will continue to look away. As security expert Steven Kefas concluded, the international community must grapple with uncomfortable questions about selective attention to terrorism and the consequences of allowing certain forms of mass violence to remain invisible. The 79,323 deaths represent more than statistics, they are fathers, mothers, children, and community leaders whose lives were cut short while the world looked elsewhere.

The Hausa people are waking up. The Middle Belt is stirring. The Orange Union is rising. And the Fulani elite are running out of time. The evidence is clear, and it demands accountability. The dead are watching. The truth is a weapon. And we are learning to use it.

Khaleed Yazeed
Founder, Wakilin Yamma Youth Development Network
Katsina State, Nigeria