Ten-year-old Celestina Geremiyah tugged at the long rope fastened to a stained 20-litre plastic container. The gallon had been cut horizontally to create a wider opening and was filled with sand dug out of a mining pit in Paseli, a community in Nasarawa local government area in central Nigeria.
This is where unlicensed miners extract the critical mineral, lithium, used in producing batteries, for electric vehicles, power storage, and phones. Geremiyah struggled with the weight of the sand as she pulled it a short distance away from the hole, emptied the container onto the ground, and returned it to the pit to be refilled.
As she repeated the toil, three other children were similarly engaged on the site, assisting miners who had dug their way several feet into the belly of the earth in search of lithium, a recently discovered mineral in Nigeria. The global transition to renewable energy has led to a growing need for minerals such as lithium, positioning Nigeria as an emerging source of this critical mineral.
For the rest of this article: https://www.icirnigeria.org/chinese-illegal-miners-deprive-government-of-revenue-exploit-child-labour-in-nasarawa/