Takeaways from AP's report on child labor in Nigeria lithium mines

NASARAWA, Nigeria (AP) — Growing demand for the lithium used in batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage has created a new frontier for mining in Nigeria.

But it’s led to exploitation of children who are often poor and take work in small, illegal mines to support themselves and their families.

The Associated Press recently traveled to the deep bush of Pasali, near the federal capital of Abuja in Nasarawa state, to follow and interview miners operating illegal mines, including some where children work. AP also witnessed negotiations and an agreement to purchase lithium by a Chinese company with no questions about the source of the lithium or how it was obtained.

The International Labour Organization estimates more than 1 million children work in mines and quarries worldwide, a problem particularly acute in Africa, where poverty, limited access to education and weak regulations add to the problem. Children, working mostly in small-scale mines, work long hours at unsafe sites, crushing or sorting rocks, carrying heavy loads of ore, and exposing themselves to toxic dust that can cause respiratory problems and asthma.

Some takeaways from AP's report:

Lithium mining began in Pasali a decade ago, transforming a remote and slumbering community into a bustling site for small-scale illegal mining, said Shedrack Bala, a 25-year-old who began working in the mines at age 15 and now owns his own pit. Dozens of mines now dot the area, all unlicensed.

The mining methods are primitive and dangerous. Miners use chisels and heavy hammers to break through rocks, descending several feet into dark pits. In some old but still viable mines, they crawl through narrow passages snaking between unstable mud walls before starting to dig. For new mines, the ground is blasted open with dynamite.

Bashir Rabiu, now 19, started in the pits as an underage worker. AP journalists watched as he wriggled around at the bottom of a pit, where miners can be at risk if dynamite explodes prematurely. They also face danger of suffocating in narrow tunnels that connect pits, or burial from wall collapse.

Rabiu hauled up raw lithium ore and passed it to six children, all younger than 10. Wearing rubber slippers and dust-stained shorts and shirts, the children hunched over rubble and chipped away with crude stone tools to extract valuable fragments.

A team of six children can sort and bag up to 10 25-kilogram bags of lithium-rich rock a day. For working from early morning to late evening, the children typically share 4,000 naira (about $2.42), according to Bala and others who use them.

None of the children in the group AP saw was attending school. Only two ever had. One, a 5-year-old boy, stopped when he was orphaned. The other was a 6-year-old girl who was pulled out of school by her family, who felt they couldn't afford to send two children to school and prioritized her 11-year-old brother.

The illegal mining thrives on informal networks of buyers and sellers who operate without much fear of the government. Aliyu Ibrahim, a lithium merchant in Nasarawa, owns unlicensed mines and also buys lithium ore from other illegal sites. At his warehouse, he told AP that his business flourishes by paying officials to look the other way. Ibrahim said he then sells his lithium in bulk to Chinese companies.

Ibrahim said he knows that children are working at his mines and others he buys from, but he said many of the children are orphans or poor. He said the work helps them survive.

AP accompanied miners from Pasali illegal mines to Chinese-owned RSIN Nigeria Limited, where a sales agreement was reached without questions about the source of the minerals or the conditions under which they were extracted. Sellers were asked to leave samples to test for lithium content. A price list from the buyers offered 200,000 naira (about $119) for a metric ton of minerals containing up to 3% lithium.

RSIN Nigeria Limited did not respond to repeated requests for comment. But in a statement to AP, the Chinese embassy in Abuja said Chinese mining companies in Nigeria “operate in line with local laws and regulations.”

Philip Jakpor, a Nigerian activist, said his nonprofit Renevlyn Development Initiative has documented widespread child labor practices across Nasarawa state.

“Revenue generation seems to have trumped the need to protect human rights,” Jakpor said. “We expect those operating in the upper spheres of the supply chain to adopt responsible models that prevent abusive conditions in mineral extraction.”

Juliane Kippenberg, associate director of children’s rights at Human Rights Watch, said global demand for lithium is expected to grow rapidly in coming years and it's imperative for governments to protect human rights and press corporations to do the same.

Segun Tomori, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Mining and Solid Minerals Development, said ongoing reforms such as amending the Minerals and Mining Act are aimed at minimizing the use of child labor. Tomori also said social safety programs such as school feeding initiatives are being revamped to keep children in school and combat child labor. He also cited a program to add mining marshals announced this year to clamp down on illegal mining.

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Juliet Samaniya, 6, chips at a rock with other children at an illegal lithium mining site in Paseli, Nigeria, Tuesday, Nov 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Aliyu Ibrahim, a lithium merchant, speaks with The Associated Press about his business in Nasarawa, Nigeria, Tuesday, Nov 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Abigail Samaniya, left, mother of Juliet Samaniya, right, 6, sit together as they speak with The Associated Press in Paseli, Nigeria, Tuesday, Nov 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Juliet Samaniya, 6, works with other children at an illegal lithium mining site in Paseli, Nigeria, Tuesday, Nov 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Juliet Samaniya, 6, chips at a rock with a stone tool at an illegal lithium mining site in Paseli, Nigeria, Tuesday, Nov 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Juliet Samaniya, 6, carries a bag of lithium with other children at an illegal mining site in Paseli, Nigeria, Tuesday, Nov 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has affixed partisan plaques to the portraits of all U.S. commanders in chief, himself included, on his Presidential Walk of Fame at the White House, describing Joe Biden as “sleepy,” Barack Obama as “divisive” and Ronald Reagan as a fan of a young Trump.

The additions, first seen publicly Wednesday, mark Trump's latest effort to remake the White House in his own image, while flouting the protocols of how presidents treat their predecessors and doubling down on his determination to reshape how U.S. history is told.

“The plaques are eloquently written descriptions of each President and the legacy they left behind,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement describing the installation in the colonnade that runs from the West Wing to the residence. “As a student of history, many were written directly by the President himself.”

Indeed, the Trumpian flourishes include the president’s typical bombastic language and haphazard capitalization. They also highlight Trump's fraught relationships with his more recent predecessors.

An introductory plaque tells passersby that the exhibit was “conceived, built, and dedicated by President Donald J. Trump as a tribute to past Presidents, good, bad, and somewhere in the middle.”

Besides the Walk of Fame and its new plaques, Trump has adorned the Oval Office in gold and razed the East Wing in preparation for a massive ballroom. Separately, his administration has pushed for an examination of how Smithsonian exhibits present the nation’s history, and he is playing a strong hand in how the federal government will recognize the nation's 250th anniversary in 2026.

Here's a look at how Trump's colonnade exhibit tells the presidential story.

Joe Biden is still the only president in the display not to be recognized with a gilded portrait. Instead, Trump chose an autopen, reflecting his mockery of Biden’s age and assertions that Biden was not up to the job.

Biden, who defeated Trump in the 2020 election and dropped out of the 2024 election before their pending rematch, is introduced as “Sleepy Joe” and “by far, the worst President in American History” who “brought our Nation to the brink of destruction.”

Two plaques blast Biden for inflation and his energy and immigration policy, among other things. The text also blames Biden for Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine and asserts falsely that Biden was elected fraudulently.

Biden’s post-White House office had no comment on his plaque.

The 44th president is described as “a community organizer, one term Senator from Illinois, and one of the most divisive political figures in American History."

The plaque calls Obama's signature domestic achievement “the highly ineffective ‘Unaffordable Care Act."

And it notes that Trump nixed other major Obama achievements: “the terrible Iran Nuclear Deal ... and ”the one-side Paris Climate Accords."

An aide to Obama also declined comment.

George W. Bush, who notably did not speak to Trump when they were last together at former President Jimmy Carter's funeral, appears to win approval for creating the Department of Homeland Security and leading the nation after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

But the plaque decries that Bush “started wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which should not have happened.”

An aide to Bush didn’t return a message seeking comment.

The 42nd president, once a friend of Trump's, gets faint praise for major crime legislation, an overhaul of the social safety net and balanced budgets.

But his plaque notes Clinton secured those achievements with a Republican Congress, the help of the 1990s “tech boom” and “despite the scandals that plagued his Presidency.”

Clinton's recognition describes the North American Free Trade Agreement, another of his major achievements, as “bad for the United States” and something Trump would “terminate” during his first presidency. (Trump actually renegotiated some terms with Mexico and Canada but did not scrap the fundamental deal.)

His plaque ends with the line: “In 2016, President Clinton's wife, Hillary, lost the Presidency to President Donald J. Trump!”

An aide to Clinton did not return a message seeking comment.

The broadsides dissipate the further back into history the plaques go.

Republican George H.W. Bush, who died during Trump's first term, is recognized for his lengthy resume before becoming president, along with legislation including the Clean Air Act and Americans With Disabilities Act — despite Trump's administration relaxing enforcement of both. The elder Bush's plaque does not note that he, not Clinton, first pushed the major trade law that became NAFTA.

Lyndon Johnson’s plaque credits the Texas Democrat for securing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 (seminal laws that Trump’s administration interprets differently than previous administrations). It correctly notes that discontent over Vietnam led to LBJ not seeking reelection in 1968.

Democrat John F. Kennedy, the uncle of Trump's health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is credited as a World War II “war hero” who later used “stirring rhetoric” as president in opposition to communism.

Republican Richard Nixon’s plaque states plainly that the Watergate scandal led to his resignation.

While Trump spared most deceased presidents of harsh criticism, he jabbed at one of his regular targets, the media — this time across multiple centuries: Andrew Jackson’s plaque says the seventh president was “unjustifiably treated unfairly by the Press, but not as viciously and unfairly as President Abraham Lincoln and President Donald J. Trump would, in the future, be.”

With two presidencies, Trump gets two displays. Each is full of praise and superlatives — “the Greatest Economy in the History of the World.” He calls his 2016 Electoral College margin of 304-227 a “landslide.”

Trump's second-term plaque notes his popular vote victory — something he did not achieve in 2016 — and concludes with “THE BEST IS YET TO COME.”

Meanwhile, the introductory plaque presumes Trump’s addition will be a White House fixture once he is no longer president: “The Presidential Walk of Fame will long live as a testament and tribute to the Greatness of America.”

Barrow reported from Atlanta.

New plaques of explanatory text have been placed underneath presidential portraits on the Colonnade at the White House, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

New plaques of explanatory text have been placed underneath presidential portraits on the Colonnade at the White House, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

New plaques of explanatory text have been placed underneath presidential portraits on the Colonnade at the White House, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

New plaques of explanatory text are seen beneath a framed portrait in the space for former President Joe Biden on the Presidential Walk of Fame on the Colonnade of the White House, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

New plaques of explanatory text have been placed underneath presidential portraits on the Colonnade at the White House, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)