Thirty-three people died of suffocation in a cell in Minna, Nigeria, on the night of Sept. 16 and into Sept. 17, and 14 of them were children. A federal investigative committee reported Tuesday that officers of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) heard detainees banging on the door and asking for water, and did not act.
The committee, chaired by Jonathan Kure, a former deputy director-general of the Department of State Services, handed its report to Interior Minister Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo in Abuja. It found that about 50 men and boys had been held together in a cell of roughly 20 square metres, with poor ventilation, little water and no working toilets. Holding adults and minors in the same cell was itself unlawful, the panel said.
“The incident was a preventable custodial tragedy caused by severe overcrowding, unlawful and unsuitable detention conditions,” Kure said. The cause of death was “acute respiratory failure consistent with environmental asphyxia, worsened by extreme heat, dehydration and inadequate ventilation.”
The detainees were arrested in raids on suspected illegal mining sites in Niger State on Sept. 15 and 16. The NSCDC’s Niger State command first said the deaths followed a suspected disease outbreak, and a survivor told reporters that an unknown substance had been sprayed into the cell. The panel dismissed both accounts. Medical evidence ruled out an outbreak, it said, and it found no evidence of an aerosol.
It placed responsibility on the command. The state commandant, identified in the reports as Siyaka, authorised the operation without a proper plan, an approved operational order or adequate oversight, the panel found, and allowed the overcrowding to happen. Nigerian outlets including Leadership and Sahara Reporters also report that the panel accused the command of issuing a false public explanation.
The committee recommended that those responsible be prosecuted for murder, criminal negligence and torture, and that the officers involved be dismissed. It proposed N30 million (naira) for the family of each person who died and N10 million for each survivor, N1.4 billion in all, plus a formal apology from the federal government and CCTV and medical response upgrades at NSCDC facilities.
The deaths set off protests in Nigeria in September. Tunji-Ojo suspended the Niger State commandant while the investigation ran, and Niger State Governor Mohammed Umaru Bago ordered a separate inquiry. Reports differ on the toll: some early accounts counted about 37 dead, while the federal panel’s report puts it at 33.
Tunji-Ojo said the report would be “forwarded to the Federal Ministry of Justice for further judicial action” and that the Interior Ministry would take administrative measures of its own. Neither ministry has said whether prosecutions will follow or when.
The people who died were Black Nigerians, many of them boys, arrested on suspicion of mining without a licence. The next decision belongs to the Justice Ministry: whether any officer will be charged.
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