By Olamide Martins Ogunlade
Nigeria’s new mineral-investment framework with the United States has been presented as an opportunity to unlock an estimated $700 billion in mineral resources and move the country beyond the export of raw materials.
On September 24, 2026, on the sidelines of the ongoing United Nations General Assembly in New York City, Nigeria’s Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake, and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau signed the framework. It focuses on geological data and exploration, mineral development and processing, infrastructure, and technical capacity, with the stated goal of strengthening local mineral value chains.
The event might signal partnership. But celebration should not replace scrutiny.
The central question is simple: will Nigeria become the industrial beneficiary of its mineral wealth, or merely the territory that supplies another country’s critical-minerals strategy?
Nigeria’s colonial mining history makes this question particularly important. Under British rule, mineral laws vested ownership in the Crown and encouraged the development of solid minerals for export. The legacy included significant environmental degradation, including abandoned mining pits on the Jos Plateau.
Today, Nigeria is politically independent and operates under its own laws. Yet political independence does not automatically guarantee economic sovereignty. A Nigerian flag at the negotiating table is a symbol of sovereignty; genuine sovereignty must also be reflected in who owns the mines, controls the technology, processes the minerals, captures the value, and bears the environmental cost.
If foreign companies control the capital, technology, markets, and higher-value stages of production while Nigerian firms remain contractors and communities carry the risks, then the language of partnership deserves closer examination.
The government’s emphasis on local processing, skills, jobs, and Nigerian businesses is therefore critical. But these commitments must be measured by outcomes, not ceremony. If minerals leave Nigeria as ore and return as batteries, components, or finished products, Nigeria remains trapped at the lower end of the value chain. The country needs not merely resource sovereignty, but value-chain sovereignty.
There is also an uncomfortable contradiction in the global rush for critical minerals. The technologies being promoted as essential to a greener future require intensive extraction. A transition can therefore be environmentally progressive at the point of consumption while reproducing ecological damage at the point of extraction. Nigeria’s own experience provides warning signs, as seen in Nasarawa, Zamfara, and Kogi States, to name a few. Gold mining in Zamfara, for example, produced severe lead contamination, with the U.S. CDC documenting dangerous exposure among children and widespread contamination associated with gold processing.
This raises tough questions. Who pays when a mine contaminates farmland or water? Who restores the land after extraction? What happens when investors leave? What rights do host communities have? And how much of the economic value remains in the communities and country from which the minerals are taken?
These cannot be treated as secondary issues. A mine cannot be considered successful if its profits are privatised while its environmental and social liabilities are left with the public.
The frontline of mineral extraction will not be the diplomatic rooms in Abuja or New York. It will be the farming communities whose land is acquired, workers exposed to unsafe conditions, artisanal miners whose livelihoods are disrupted, and families whose water and environment may be affected.
There is also a legitimate reason to examine the antecedents of the United States itself. Declassified U.S. government records from the 1950s explicitly identified access to Africa’s strategic raw materials as an American interest. One 1954 National Security Council document listed “adequate access to the critical strategic raw materials ” of Africa among major U.S. interests, while another identified Africa’s strategic minerals as important to U.S. security and economic objectives.
That reminds us of slavery that is now manifesting as eco-capitalism. It does remind us that international partnerships are built around interests, and interests tilt towards gains.
The real opportunity is not simply to extract more minerals. It is to truly be independent. It is to facilitate the switch to eco-friendly alternatives and build our research and technical institutions to determine value, distribute it, and guard our mine corridors to preserve our sovereignty. It is to ensure transparent contracts, fair taxation, environmental accountability, community participation, and enforceable obligations for mine closure and restoration.
Otherwise, the vocabulary may change while the underlying economic relationship remains familiar: strategic commodities become critical minerals; concessions become investment frameworks; foreign extraction becomes global supply-chain integration; and colonial-era resource dependence acquires the language of green development.
Nigeria’s independence, therefore, cannot be measured solely by the flag flying behind or in front of the negotiators. It must be measured by who controls the mine, who owns the technology, who captures the value, who carries the risk, and what remains for Nigerians when the mineral beneath the soil is gone.
The $700 billion estimate should not simply be treated as a treasure waiting to be unlocked. It should be treated as a test of Nigeria’s economic sovereignty.
The question is not whether Nigeria should develop its minerals. It is whether that development will be for Nigerians, on terms Nigerians can defend, with benefits Nigerians can retain.
Ogunlade, an Associate Director and Head of Climate and Extractives Campaigns at Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA), writes from Lagos, Nigeria