The Colonial Office and the Employment of Children in the Nigerian Tin Mines in the 1950s

Abstract

The mining, smelting, and use of tin in Nigeria for, among other things, the making of luxury items such as jewelry date back to the period of the Nok culture, during the Middle Stone Age, 3500–1500 BC.¹ In 1813, Muhammad Bello, one of the prominent leaders of the Sokoto Jihad and Caliphate, wrote that the “countries of Gwandara and Riruwe” were “where it is said tin is found.”² But modern and capitalist tin mining in Nigeria only started in the first decade of the twentieth century. Its ultimate “success” was made possible by the deliberate destruction of traditional and indigenous tin mining and smelting by the Nigerian colonial state.³