A United States law firm Von Batten Montague York posted a statement on X on 18 September 2026 saying it was shocked by the deaths of 37 Nigerian miners who suffocated after Nigerian officials locked them in a metal container with no air vents.
The firm said the same mines are the ones many Nigerians believe President Bola Tinubu is ready to give away to keep alleged heroin trafficking records private.
The firm said it appears the president finds it acceptable to use Nigeria mines to secure a meeting with President Donald Trump and hide FBI drug files but not acceptable for poor Nigerians to use those same mines to feed their families. The firm said Nigeria wealth belongs to the Nigerian people not to the president and his helpers.
It said instead of drinking champagne with President Emmanuel Macron in France the president should cut short his taxpayer funded vacation and return home to explain what went wrong. The firm sent condolences to the families of the dead and to the Nigerian people and asked that God stay with them in this hard time.
The deaths happened in Minna the capital of Niger State. Officers of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps arrested scores of people suspected of illegal gold mining on 15 and 16 September 2026 around the Wushishi and Lukoto areas.
More than 60 detainees were later packed into one small cell built for about 10 people. Survivors said the room had almost no air. They banged on the door and begged for air and water. Guards did not open the door.
Some survivors said officers sprayed a substance that smelled like perfume into the room before locking it. By the early hours of 17 September 37 people were dead. Many were young men and teenagers. Officials first said a disease outbreak caused the deaths. An intelligence report and survivor accounts pointed out instead to overcrowding heat and lack of air. The federal government suspended the Niger State commandant Suberu Siyaka Aniviye and later more officers. It set up investigation panels. Protests broke out in Minna. Authorities imposed a curfew.
President Tinubu was in Paris at the time on a working vacation that began in London. On the night of 17 September, he had a private dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace. The presidency said the talk reaffirmed friendship and cooperation between Nigeria and France.
The firm has for months pressed United States agencies to release 1990s FBI and DEA records from a heroin investigation that included a civil forfeiture of 460000 dollars from an account in Tinubu name. United States courts have confirmed Tinubu was a subject of that inquiry. He has never been charged or convicted of a drug crime and has denied any wrongdoing. The firm has also claimed Nigeria offered mining cooperation to the United States as part of efforts to obtain a meeting with Trump and to keep the old files from becoming public. Nigeria and the United States later signed a mining framework in New York covering exploration processing and investment. The firm said the mines belong to ordinary Nigerians who die trying to feed their families from them.
