Nexus between illegal mining and insurgency: Unmasking driver of conflict and environmental grievances in the northwest, Nigeria

Abstract

This study explores the complex dynamics driving insecurity in Northwestern Nigeria, shifting analytical focus from surface-level criminal manifestations banditry and kidnapping to the deeper structural issues that fundamentally sustain insurgent violence in the region. By interrogating the political economy of mineral extraction, this study posits that illegal mining operations, constitute the primary driver of conflict architecture in the Northwest. The study leverages Agency Capture Theory to examine how regulatory institutions have been systematically compromised by foreign companies, government officials, and local politicians who facilitate unregulated mining activities with impunity. Employing a qualitative research design with reliant on extant literature. Findings emanating from the study reveal that banditry and kidnapping, primarily carried out by small-scale petty criminals operating outside core insurgency zones, serve as strategic distraction from the larger, more lucrative enterprise of illegal mining. Findings submit that while foreign nationals and high-net-worth individuals implicated in this illicit economy remain remarkably unaffected by the smokescreen of insecurity often conducting operations through proxies and protected by captured regulatory institutions, the communities whose farmlands are targeted for displacement to access mineral deposits are left completely uncared for by government, abandoned to navigate the devastating consequences of environmental destruction, livelihood loss, and violence alone. The study recommends the establishment of a depoliticized mining oversight mechanism including a special mining crimes tribunal with prosecutorial independence and a Joint Mineral Supply Chain Task Force to track and disrupt smuggling corridors, alongside mandatory beneficial ownership transparency and a whistleblower protection program targeting insider information on political and regulatory figures implicated in illegal mining protection. Finally, the study recommends the immediate deployment of a Mining-Affected Communities Restoration and Reparations Program including remediation across mineral-rich zones, a Community Restitution Fund financed through mining levies and asset forfeiture proceeds to compensate displaced communities and restore livelihoods, and mandatory inclusion of women in restitution governance structures to address documented gender-based violence and exclusion.