Juliet, 6, carries a bag of lithium with other children at an illegal mining site in Paseli. — AP
DRESSED in a faded pink dress, six-year-old Juliet Samaniya crouches under the blistering Nigerian sun, chipping at jagged white rocks with a crude stone tool. Dust clings to her tiny hands and hair as she toils for hours, earning less than a dollar a day.
Juliet should be in school, her mother Abigail admits, but mining lithium – the vital mineral for batteries driving the global clean energy revolution – is the only way for her family to make ends meet.
“That is the only option,” Abigail says.
Juliet is one of over a million children worldwide working in mines and quarries, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO). In Africa, where poverty, limited education, and weak regulations exacerbate the problem, child labour in mines is particularly rampant.
In Nigeria, the burgeoning demand for lithium has transformed rural communities like Pasali into illegal mining hubs. Yet this growth comes at a steep human cost, exploiting the country’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens, especially children.
Dangerous work and a broken system
The children of Pasali work in primitive and hazardous conditions. Miners use chisels and hammers to extract lithium from rocks, descending into precarious pits where cave-ins and suffocation are constant threats.
Dynamite blasts carve open new mining sites, creating an environment fraught with peril.
Nineteen-year-old Bashir Rabiu, who started mining as a child, recalls watching others die in collapsed tunnels. Yet, he says, “It is God that protects.”
Above ground, Juliet and five other children, all under 10, hunch over heaps of rubble, chipping away with makeshift tools.
Together, they can fill up to 10 25kg bags of lithium-rich rock a day, splitting around US$2.42 (RM11).
A man showing a lithium stone from an illegal mining site in Paseli. — AP
The meagre earnings cover basic meals for their families.
Despite Nigerian laws mandating free basic education and banning child labour, these protections are often ignored. Corruption among officials and the remote location of illegal mines make enforcement nearly impossible.
A community in crisis
Pasali’s local elementary school, once bustling with 300 pupils, is now nearly empty. When interviewed, schoolmaster Sule Dantini laments that only three students attended class.
Families like Juliet’s struggle to pay hidden fees at supposedly free government schools.
In Pasali, parents are charged a 5,000-naira (RM13) levy per term, making education unaffordable for the poorest.
For Juliet’s family, choosing between education and survival means sending her to the mines instead of school.
Mining has been a lifeline for Pasali, yet it has also drained its resources and undermined its future.
Unlicensed mines dot the landscape, operated by networks of buyers and sellers who thrive in the absence of regulation.
The dark side
Much of Pasali’s lithium ends up in the hands of Chinese companies, which dominate Nigeria’s extractive industries.
At an unlicensed site visited by reporters, miners negotiated directly with representatives of RSIN Nigeria Ltd, a Chinese-owned firm, without any scrutiny of the source or conditions under which the minerals were extracted.
A price list offered 200,000 naira (RM529) per metric ton of lithium-rich rock containing up to 3% lithium. Once purchased, the material enters the global supply chain, often disguised through false documentation or hidden in legitimate shipments.
The Chinese embassy in Abuja maintains that its government enforces strict policies against illegal mining and labour practices abroad.
However, reports of environmental harm and worker exploitation involving Chinese firms persist across Nigeria and beyond.
Tackling the crisis
Nigeria’s government is attempting to curb illegal mining and child labour.
Earlier last year, it launched a corps of mining marshals to crack down on unlicensed operations.
Reforms to the Minerals and Mining Act aim to strengthen oversight, while social initiatives like school feeding programmes aim to keep children in classrooms.
Activists argue that these measures, though promising, are insufficient.
“Revenue generation seems to have trumped the need to protect human rights,” says Philip Jakpor of the Renevlyn Development Initiative. His organisation has documented widespread child labour in Nasarawa state, where Pasali is located.
Juliane Kippenberg of Human Rights Watch underscores the urgency of addressing the issue.
“With global demand for lithium expected to grow, governments and corporations must adopt responsible practices that prioritise human rights.”
A mother’s hope
For Juliet’s mother Abigail, the dream of a better life for her daughter feels distant. Yet she clings to hope.
“I still want her to go to school, have a better life, work in an office, not a mine forever,” she says.
As the world races to adopt cleaner energy technologies, the cost borne by communities like Pasali raises pressing questions about the ethics of this transition. The clean energy revolution promises a brighter future, but for Nigeria’s child miners, the present remains bleak. — AP
