Nigeria shuts illegal gold mine abandoned by 4,000 miners — Mongabay

In Nigeria, a military operation helped shut down the illegal Kila gold mine in Gashaka-Gumti National Park. According to Mongabay, more than 4,000 miners left the site.

Tunde Morakinyo, executive director of the conservation organization Africa Nature Investors Foundation (ANI), said that before the Nigerian military arrived in July 2026, the miners had already left the mining site. According to him, no shots were fired during the operation, and bulldozers filled in pits and shafts. ANI helps the state manage the park.

Pressure on the national park

Gashaka-Gumti National Park, established in 1991, is located in Adamawa and Taraba states near the border with Cameroon and covers 6,731 square kilometers. It is Nigeria's largest national park and is home to the endangered Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes ellioti. The park also has more than a thousand plant species and hundreds of bird and butterfly species.

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Ibrahim Musa Goni, head of the Nigeria National Park Service, called illegal mining a growing threat to protected areas. He confirmed the deaths of two rangers in Gashaka-Gumti in 2025 and said that another ranger was stabbed and wounded that year. Morakinyo claimed that financiers with political connections and armed groups may have been involved in the gold trade, but Mongabay was unable to independently verify these claims or the circumstances of the rangers' deaths.

The need for alternative income

Former miners and Kila residents told Mongabay that gold mining was a source of income not only for mine workers, but also for traders, food vendors and other residents. After the closure, some people began transporting passengers on motorcycles, while others went to new mining sites in Nigeria or neighboring Cameroon.

Goni acknowledged that miners may return to the park. Rangers monitor the Kila area and adjacent buffer zones, receiving information from local volunteer groups. ANI says it employs more than 180 rangers, supports farming, livestock breeding, microfinance and education, and is building a school in Kila. At the same time, no specific plan for transitioning Kila residents to alternative sources of income, with defined funding and timelines, was presented.