The NEF warned that the move represents a deliberate act of economic dispossession against Northern Nigeria and a deepening of structural inequality within the federation.
The Northern Elders Forum (NEF) has condemned the Bola Tinubu-led government’s decision to locate Nigeria’s national gold refinery in Lagos State.
The NEF warned that the move represents a deliberate act of economic dispossession against Northern Nigeria and a deepening of structural inequality within the federation.
In a statement addressed to Northern political leaders, elites and stakeholders, the Forum said the siting of the refinery far from the country’s major gold-producing areas in the North was neither an oversight nor a policy mistake, but a calculated decision with grave economic, social and security consequences.
The statement, signed by NEF’s spokesperson, Professor Abubakar Jika Jiddere, accused the Federal Government of systematically stripping Northern communities of value addition while concentrating industrial benefits in Lagos and its surrounding areas.
According to the Forum, the decision reinforces an extractive economic model in which raw materials are sourced from the North, while processing, branding, financing and industrial infrastructure are consistently located elsewhere.
“The decision to locate Nigeria’s gold refinery in Lagos while gold is mined from Northern soil is not a policy error. It is not an oversight. It is a deliberate act of economic dispossession,” Jiddere said.
“It strips value addition from Northern communities, exports opportunity to the already privileged centre, and condemns the source regions to poverty, unemployment, and perpetual insecurity.”
NEF said the practice mirrors colonial-era economic arrangements, describing it as “internal colonialism” incompatible with modern federalism and Nigeria’s development objectives.
“To again remove the locus of value addition from these communities is to perpetuate an extractive model reminiscent of colonial economics, where raw materials are sourced from the periphery and wealth is accumulated at the centre. This is not development,” the Forum stated.
The group argued that for decades, Northern Nigeria has functioned as what it described as a “triple extraction zone” — supplying raw minerals, agricultural produce and cheap labour — while industrial processing and economic infrastructure are concentrated in other regions.
“Northern farmers produce the bulk of the nation’s food, yet agro-processing plants, commodity exchanges, logistics hubs and export value chains are sited elsewhere,” Jiddere said.
“Grains, livestock, tomatoes, cotton, hides and skins leave the North in raw form, only to return as finished goods priced beyond the reach of the very communities that produced them. This is not inefficiency; it is designed underdevelopment.”
The Forum warned that the continuous denial of industrial infrastructure to the North has worsened youth unemployment, rural collapse and insecurity.
“Every refinery sited away from the resource zone deepens youth despair. Every agro-processing plant denied to the North accelerates rural collapse. These outcomes are predictable consequences of structural exclusion,” the statement said.
NEF also criticised what it described as the silence of Northern governors, lawmakers, ministers and traditional rulers, accusing them of failing to defend the economic interests of their region.
“Where are the Northern governors who invoke unity while accepting economic strangulation? Where are the senators, ministers and party chieftains who enjoy proximity to power but cannot defend the economic dignity of their people?” Jiddere asked.
The Forum warned that history would judge leaders who remain silent in the face of what it called systemic exclusion.
In a separate open letter to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the Federal Executive Council, NEF anchored its objections on constitutional provisions, citing Sections 14(3), 16(1)(b) and 162(2) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended).
It argued that the derivation principle recognises the right of resource-bearing areas to benefit meaningfully from resources extracted from their land, stressing that derivation should not be reduced to fiscal allocations alone.
“While derivation has often been framed in fiscal terms, its underlying philosophy is unmistakable: resource origin must matter in the distribution of economic benefits,” the Forum said.
“To deny gold-producing regions the industrial and developmental benefits of refining is to hollow out the derivation principle and reduce it to a token accounting exercise.”
NEF further warned that the persistent concentration of strategic economic assets in Lagos has fuelled spatial inequality, weakened trust in the federal system and heightened perceptions of economic marginalisation in the North.
Citing international best practices, the Forum noted that countries such as Australia, Canada, South Africa, Ghana and Chile deliberately site primary processing and refining facilities close to mining locations to stimulate regional industrialisation and curb illicit activities.
“Nigeria’s decision to refine gold far from its source is not merely unconventional; it is economically regressive,” the Forum said.
It also highlighted the environmental degradation, insecurity and criminal networks associated with unregulated mining in Northern states such as Zamfara, Kebbi, Niger, Kaduna and Katsina, arguing that the region bears the burden of extraction without enjoying its benefits.
“When the moment arises to locate refining infrastructure that would create skilled employment, stimulate technology transfer and catalyse industrial clusters, the region is once again bypassed. This is not an abstract policy choice; it is a lived injustice,” NEF stated.
The Forum described the decision as inconsistent with Nigeria’s long-standing policy of siting oil refineries close to crude-producing regions and called for a decentralised, resource-proximate refining framework.
NEF demanded that at least one primary gold refinery be located within Northern Nigeria’s gold-producing corridor, with Lagos restricted, if necessary, to trading, certification or export functions.
It urged the Federal Government to act not as a concession, but as a constitutional obligation, warning that no rhetoric about national cohesion can survive sustained economic exclusion.