Community petitions Niger State government over health crisis linked to illegal industrial activity
Residents of Gidan Madara, located behind the Tradefair Complex in Minna, Niger State, have raised the alarm over what they describe as a life-threatening pollution crisis caused by a plastics melting and recycling facility operating within their residential community.
In a petition obtained by NOHR on Friday, the residents alleged that Golden Age Water Factory — originally licensed as a water processing plant — has since been converted into a full-scale plastics recycling operation, emitting toxic fumes, soot, and chemicals into the surrounding neighbourhood around the clock. According to the petition, residents have been raising concerns with both the factory owner and environmental authorities since 2019, but say their appeals have gone unanswered.
Addressed to the Niger State House of Assembly and the Commissioner for Environment and Climate Change, the petition calls for the immediate shutdown of the facility. “This letter is a special appeal to the Commissioner for urgent intervention to shut down Golden Age Water Factory, which has mutated from a water processing factory to a plastics junkyard, where all grades of plastic wastes are melted and recycled in a residential area, with utter disregard to air quality and the health safety of adjoining residents,” the petition read.
Residents described harrowing day-to-day conditions, saying the pollution had already begun to take a measurable toll on public health — particularly among children and the elderly. “We suffer asphyxiation day and night, and some residents of Gidan Madara have already developed respiratory diseases like asthma, chronic catarrh, cough, chest pain and insomnia,” the petition stated. They further warned of risks of blood poisoning, cardiovascular failure, and premature death, lamenting that the factory owner returns home to clean air while his neighbours bear the consequences of his operations.
The community also levelled accusations against federal and state environmental agencies, including NESREA and NISEPA, alleging that both bodies had failed to enforce existing environmental standards despite repeated appeals. “They have failed to stop the environmental injustice for overriding public health interest, nor compel him to remove the plastics recycling plant from the residential area, from 2019,” the petition noted.
Beyond the immediate health crisis, residents framed the situation as a broader governance failure, arguing that the factory’s unchecked mutation into an industrial facility within a residential zone contradicts Governor Bago’s urban renewal agenda for Niger State. “The mutation of Golden Age Water Factory to a plastics recycling facility in a predominantly residential area is an aberration in 21st-century civilisation, an abuse of privileges in a peaceful neighbourhood and a blatant insult to Mr. Governor’s New Niger and Urban Renewal Initiatives,” they wrote.
Despite the strength of their grievances, residents were careful to frame their petition as a call for lawful intervention rather than opposition to economic activity. “We are not opposed to investment, but utterly reject any investment that threatens our health and right to life. We have endured enough. We can no longer enjoy quality sleep at night nor fresh air in the daytime. We are dying gradually,” the petition concluded.
The residents attached photographic and video evidence to support their claims, and are calling on the Niger State government to take immediate steps to halt operations at the facility and restore environmental safety to both Gidan Madara and the neighbouring Dadin Kowa community.
As of the time of this report, neither the factory owner nor the Niger State Ministry of Environment had responded to the residents’ petition.
