Buried Futures: How Nigeria’s Gold Rush is Stealing Girls from School

Nigeria has an estimated 18.3 million children currently out of school, ranking it last globally, according to a 2024 UNICEF report.

Fourteen-year-old Sulihat Abdullahi who lives in Chanchaga, Niger State, Nigeria, is one of those girls. She once dreamt of becoming a medical doctor, but last year her father was immobilized in a tragic accident.

As the eldest of six children, Sulihat quit school and began working in local gold mines to help feed her family, digging hard rocks in the scorching sun for daily wages that barely sustained her family.

Sulihat’s life illustrates a growing crisis: across Nigeria, economic hardship is pushing more children – especially girls – into dangerous mining work. Instead of classrooms, they’re in pits, exposed to mercury poisoning, sexual exploitation, and cave-ins. 

Three of Sulihat’s sisters also mine gold. Only two siblings remain in school. Their mother, Hauwa Abdullahi, is unemployed.

In communities like Chanchaga, gold mining has become a primary source of income for school-aged girls. UNICEF data shows that 42.8 percent of children are out of school — girls make up more than half of that number.

The crisis continues despite warnings over the years that children are being exploited in the mines. In 2023, the International Labor Organization published a chilling report, “Child labor in the artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) sector in Nigeria: A situational analysis.” It is estimated that about one million children, aged five to 17, are working in small-scale mining and quarrying activities worldwide. In Niger State, researchers surveyed 2,430 people. They found that children as young as six were working in hazardous conditions – from explosives to toxic chemicals, abuse, extreme temperatures, dust fumes, and “dark or confined spaces.” 

The report’s researchers detailed the working conditions for children, writing: “In mines, children descend to the bowels of the earth to crawl through narrow, cramped, and poorly lit makeshift tunnels where the air is thick with dust. They constantly risk fatal accidents due to falling rock, explosions, collapse of mine walls, and the use of equipment designed for adults. Almost all work performed by children in mining and quarrying is hazardous and is considered to be among the worst forms of child labour.”

The primary reason that children drop out of school is that they “cannot afford schooling (poverty).” The primary reasons for children going into mining were poverty and “lack of parental support.”

According to the International Center for Investigative Reporting, 15 young miners died in a mining pit collapse operated by African Minerals and Logistics Limited in Galkogo, a remote Niger State community. Its team of journalists found the site dominated by school-aged children, particularly girls.

Since 2021, security problems have shuttered over 400 schools across the state, displacing 11,113 children. Many turned to mining and street hawking to survive.

In August 2023, the Niger State government briefly banned mining operations, citing safety concerns. The ban was lifted shortly afterward, allegedly to register miners and regulate the sector. But enforcement has been weak, and illegal mining persists – often with children at its core.

Girls earning $6.70 a day mining gold 

Sulihat completed school through the sixth grade, but after her father’s accident, she was expected, as the eldest child, to help her parents take care of her siblings. She began working in gold mining because other options were not available.

“Gold mining is risky, as it comes with a lot of threats to life and abuses,” Sulihat told More to Her Story.

Girls like Sulihat work in craters where sand often collapses on their heads. Ibrahim Suleiman, a local community leader, said many young miners have died under such conditions.

Police even chased some girls from the mines for skipping school. In the process, girls are often injured.

“Those who chase us from the gold mining site have never helped if we chose to stay at home,” Sulihat said. 

Most days, Sulihat earns hardly more than 10,000 naira, approximately $6.70 USD, per week. “This money is not enough for family upkeep, let alone furthering my education,” Sulihat said, in tears. 

Still, she remains hopeful that she will one day achieve her dream of completing her education. 

The United Nations recognizes education as a fundamental human right under Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Articles 28 and 29 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. But the opposite is true on the ground in Nigeria. Nigeria’s Universal Basic Education law mandates free education in government schools for all children from primary school to junior secondary school. Yet, dropout rates remain high – especially among girls – due to a lack of accountability and enforcement. Sometimes, parents say they cannot afford the expenses associated with sending a child to school, including uniforms, transportation costs, books, and other expenses.

“I would be the happiest person seeing my girls stop gold mining and return to school. Mining can’t help them in fulfilling their dreams,” Sulihat’s mother, Hauwa, told More to Her Story.

‘Sulihat is not alone’

“Sulihat is not alone, as other out-of-school girls also face similar challenges while mining,” Ahmed Jibril, a concerned community member in Chanchaga, told More to Her Story.

In 2023, Khadijah Umar, now 18, dropped out of school at Junior Secondary School 3 after her father died. Her mother couldn’t afford to care for her and her three siblings.

Under pressure to feed her family, Khadijah became the breadwinner and went to work in the gold mines.

Khadijah works long hours in deep pits, excavating the hard ground to find gold. Sometimes, she can’t find any gold, forcing her family to go hungry.

Jibril said that some parents are exploiting their own children. “It has impacted laziness in some parents who do nothing to sustain their family,” he said, “just relying on the proceeds from the gold mining to augment their family bills.”

Khadijah said she rarely ever makes any more than 15,000 naira, or $10 USD, from gold mining. 

“Gold mining is not lucrative but a risky engagement with unpredictable outcomes. The gold miners don't make as much money as people normally assume,” Khadijah told More to Her Story. 

Male miners verbally abuse the girls, Khadijah said, but the girls don’t report the harassment for fear the police will arrest them. On 10th July, 2024, police arrested her when she was on the job, and she was detained for a week in a police cell in Minna before being bailed out.

 “The fear of being held in detention scares the girls from reporting abuses and harassment to the police. The level of vulnerability to abuses is higher with the girls than the boys,” said Mohammed Jibril, a concerned community member.  

Community efforts to end child labor in gold mining

Gold mining has been active in Chanchaga since 2005. 

Initially, girls weren’t working in the mines. That changed as families, pressured by poverty, began pushing daughters into the pits instead of classrooms.

Now, the situation for girls is the worst it’s ever been. The rapid influx of money from the gold mines makes it challenging to bring girls back to the classroom. “There is loss of interest and misplacement of priority as parents who ought to drive the process of sending the girls to school end up pushing them into gold mining for gains,” said Musa Salihu, a teacher at the Government Junior Secondary School in Minna in Niger State.

“The gold mining boom in the state has changed the narrative from bad to worse as the girls see it as a soft landing spot and more rewarding ventures to school,” Salihu said. 

Ibrahim Ado, community head in Chanchaga, said that “despite the deployment of several strategies involving parents of the girls, setting up different committees to end gold mining yielded no positive result.” Most of the girls come from the local Hausa-speaking tribe, but Ado said, "parents’ selfishness for money, instead of their daughters’ education, makes it difficult to reverse the trend.” 

A while ago, community leaders launched a program aimed at encouraging parents to send their daughters back to school. “The new approach is to assign delegates to conduct compound meetings with the fathers of the girls to encourage their girls to embrace education and return to school,” Ado said. 

“The gold mining is not of benefit to the community. Rather, it is trouble, in some cases death,” Ado lamented. 

Experts said government support is key to putting an end to this long-standing menace and getting the girls back to school.

Why are government policies failing?

Child labor is rampant in northern Nigeria, including in Niger State, as families struggle with poverty and economic insecurity, leading girls into unsafe labor conditions to help support their families.

In July 2023, Nigeria enacted the Child Rights Act, which followed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. However, not all of the nation’s 36 states enacted the law.

The Child Rights Act limits child labor. Sections 28 and 30 of the Act prohibit children below the age of 15 years from hazardous work that interferes with their education, harms their development, and uses children in illicit activities such as gold mining.

Sections 60 and 61 of the Labour Act 1974 prohibit the engagement of a child in an industrial setting such as mines, factories, and hazardous environments and require the consent of parents for youth aged 12 to 16 to work in a non-toxic environment. Despite these protections, the number of children working outside of school continues to rise. 

“Though government school is free without school fees with associated expenses such as books, textbooks, and uniforms for parents to handle, the school dropouts continue to rise, especially among the girls,” Salihu said. 

In 2025, Niger State allocated over 50 percent of its budget to education and health – surpassing the 14.55 percent earmarked for education in 2024. President Bola Tinubu has pledged support for school dropout recovery and skill-building programs, but the results have yet to materialize. Community leaders question whether the government truly intends to end child labor and support alternatives for families.

Until then, girls like Sulihat and Khadijah remain stuck, caught between poverty and policy failure, their dreams buried beneath the gold-dusted soil.