BY OJO SAMSON AYOMIDE
Ngaski Local Government Area in northwestern Kebbi State with its headquarters at Wara and lying on the shores of Kainji Lake near the Niger River in Nigeria is an agricultural community where millet, sorghum and maize once defined livelihoods. Today, however, artisanal gold mining has reshaped parts of its landscape and its prospects.
Photographs compiled by the Nigerian Youth Biodiversity Network (NYBN) show sluice pits, crushed ore, and open tailings that now scar fields once used for food and grazing.
As a youth-led and youth-focused organisation, the NYBN is alarmed by a widening convergence of harmful practices: mercury-dependent mining methods, rapid land degradation, declining biodiversity, youth exposure to toxic work, and the growing insecurity that blocks help and reform.
The Minamata Convention, the global pact to protect human health and the environment from mercury places this issue squarely within international concern. For youth advocates, mercury pollution in artisanal mining is not only an environmental problem; it is an intergenerational justice issue.
On the ground, community perceptions are complex. An interview conducted with a local respondent – later translated by NYBN (from Hausa to English) – captures that ambivalence. The interviewee explains that gold mining is an age-old activity in the region, practiced “since I was born,” and that the work provides crucial income and food security, yet it remains insufficient to cover healthcare needs or secure long-term well-being.
They report visible changes in water quality and landscape, and they acknowledge awareness of mercury’s dangers. They also eagerly welcome training on safer mining methods. They described prior attempts to engage government but expressed little confidence in official assistance.
This testimony highlights three truths: (1) artisanal mining is socially and economically embedded; (2) local people perceive environmental change and exposure risks; and (3) communities want alternatives and capacity-building, but distrust and institutional neglect hinder progress. Any effective response must start with these lived realities.
Where mining proliferates without safeguards, fragile habitats are fragmented, soils erode, and waterways carry sediment and chemical residues downstream. Young people often present at sites from infancy are especially vulnerable to the chronic harm of contaminants and the immediate dangers of unrehabilitated pits.
The combination of degraded land, weakened livelihoods, and limited public support creates a feedback loop: declining agricultural productivity pushes more households toward hazardous mining practices, amplifying risks to biodiversity and human health.
Beyond environmental damage, many gold-bearing regions face security challenges that make solutions difficult to implement. Where non-state armed actors exert control, access for health workers, researchers and civil society is blocked and formalization efforts falter. Weak oversight, coupled with constrained local trust in government, means that top-down policies alone will not succeed.