Mina Deaths: PRP’s Presidential hopeful tasks committee on transparent investigation

From Godwin Tsa, Abuja

Presidential aspirant of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), Yakubu Mohammed Kingsley, has called on the Jonathan Kure led probe committee to conduct a “thorough, transparent and impartial investigation” into the deaths of 37 suspected artisanal miners who died while in the custody of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) in Minna, Niger State— some of them reportedly teenagers.

The Federal Government on Tuesday, inaugurated a 10-member independent investigative committee into the incident,bchaired by retired Deputy Director-General of the Department of State Services, Jonathan Kure, while former Director-General of the Nigerian Law School, Prof Isa Hayatu Chiroma, SAN, serves as secretary.

In a statement issued in Abuja, Kingsley said survivors’ accounts of detainees packed into an overcrowded cell, struggling to breathe and calling for help before dying, demanded answers from the institution meant to protect them. “Whatever the circumstances that led to their detention, they remained human beings whose lives deserved protection, dignity and humane treatment,” he said.

Beyond the immediate tragedy, Kingsley tied the deaths to a wider crisis: young Nigerians, including children, being pushed into dangerous illegal mining by poverty and lack of formal employment in mineral-rich communities. He said this did not excuse illegal mining or environmental destruction, and that criminal networks exploiting the sector still needed to be dealt with firmly — but insisted “enforcement alone cannot address a problem whose roots also lie in poverty, unemployment and the absence of viable alternatives.”

He used the moment to promote his YMK Nigeria Project’s resource-governance framework, which he said would make mining communities recognised stakeholders with rights to development, jobs, infrastructure and grievance mechanisms, while formalising artisanal mining through regulation, training and access to finance.

Kingsley, who is awaiting a November 2 Federal High Court judgment on a dispute over PRP’s presidential primary, said the victims “should not be allowed to be another statistic,” and extended condolences to their families and to the Niger State government.

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