“We are ready to die here,” miners return to site

Some teenage and adult miners returned to the M.I. Wushishi mining site in Minna, Niger State, even as the mass arrest of suspected illegal miners was still underway, insisting that they had no other means of livelihood. The miners returned to the site despite the arrest of scores of their colleagues by the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) and the subsequent deaths of 37 of those detained. Many of the miners, including boys, women and adults, were seen working at the site on Saturday, digging for gold with shovels, picks and other hand tools. Some of them said they had returned to the mining site on the same day the NSCDC carried out the mass arrests, arguing that abandoning mining would leave them without any source of income.

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