The Northern Elders Forum (NEF), has warned Northern political leaders and elites against remaining silent over the Federal Government’s decision to site Nigeria’s national gold refinery in Lagos State, describing the move as a deliberate act of economic dispossession and a deepening of structural inequality.
In a strongly worded message addressed to Northern elites, political leaders and stakeholders, the Forum said the location of the refinery outside the country’s major gold-producing regions in Northern Nigeria was neither an oversight nor a policy error, but a decision with far-reaching economic and security implications.
Signed by its spokesperson, Professor Abubakar Jika Jiddere, NEF accused the Federal Government of stripping value addition from Northern communities while concentrating industrial benefits in Lagos and its environs.
According to the Forum, the decision perpetuates an extractive economic model in which raw materials are sourced from the North while processing, branding, financing and industrial infrastructure are located elsewhere.
NEF said Section 14(3), which enshrines the federal character principle, was designed to prevent the concentration of national advantages in ways that marginalise any region, while Section 16 mandates the state to manage the economy on the basis of social justice and equality of opportunity.
Jiddere said: “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. It strips value addition from Northern communities, exports opportunity to the already privileged center, and condemns the source regions to poverty, unemployment, and perpetual insecurity.
“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 center. This is not development. It is internal colonialism.
“This injustice is systemic, not accidental.
For decades, Northern Nigeria has been reduced to a triple extraction zone:
the supplier of raw minerals, the supplier of agricultural produce, and the supplier of cheap labour, while processing, branding, financing, and industrial infrastructure are consistently sited elsewhere.
“Northern farmers produce the bulk of the nation’s food, yet agro-processing plants, commodity exchanges, logistics hubs, and export value chains are concentrated outside the region. 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 under development.
“Every refinery sited away from the resource zone deepens youth despair.
Every agro-processing plant denied to the North accelerates rural collapse.
Every lost industrial anchor strengthens the conditions that breed banditry, kidnapping, and mass poverty.
“These outcomes are not mysterious. They are predictable consequences of structural exclusion. What makes this moment unforgivable is not only federal insensitivity but elite cowardice.
“Where are the Northern governors who invoke unity while accepting economic strangulation? Where are the senators, ministers, party chieftains, and traditional power brokers who enjoy proximity to power but cannot defend the economic dignity of their people?
“If Northern elites cannot speak when their region is systematically excluded from mineral and agricultural value chains, history will record that today’s leadership traded regional dignity for access to political favour and power.
“No rhetoric about national cohesion can survive sustained economic humiliation. The North is not asking for favour.
It is demanding constitutional fairness.
“If derivation justifies benefits for oil-producing regions, it must apply to gold and solid minerals. If federal character restrains political appointments, it must restrain economic concentration, industrial siting, and agro-industrial monopolisation. Anything else is hypocrisy masquerading as policy.”
The Forum also criticised what it described as the silence of Northern governors, lawmakers, ministers and traditional leaders, warning that history would judge leaders who fail to defend the economic dignity of their region.
In a separate open letter to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the Federal Executive Council, the Forum grounded its objections in constitutional provisions, citing Sections 14(3), 16(1)(b) and 162(2) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended).
The Forum further 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.
The Forum 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.
He added, “While derivation has often been framed in fiscal terms, its underlying philosophy is unmistakable: resource origin must matter in the distribution of economic benefits. 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.
“International best practice in extractive economies is unequivocal. In jurisdictions such as Australia, Canada, South Africa, Ghana, and Chile, primary processing and refining facilities are deliberately located proximate to mining sites.
“This approach minimises logistical inefficiencies, strengthens regulatory oversight, curbs smuggling, integrates artisanal miners into formal value chains, and most importantly anchors regional industrialisation. Nigeria’s decision to refine gold far from its source is therefore not merely unconventional; it is economically regressive.
“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 center. Such a model is incompatible with modern federalism, incompatible with constitutional equity, and incompatible with Nigeria’s stated development objectives.
“Northern Nigeria, particularly states such as Zamfara, Kebbi, Niger, Kaduna, Katsina, and adjoining areas has absorbed the environmental degradation, social dislocation, insecurity, and criminal networks associated with unregulated mining.
“Yet, 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.”
The forum described the decision as inconsistent with the 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, if necessary, restricted to trading, certification or export functions.
The forum urge the Federal Government to act not out of concession, but out of constitutional duty, economic reason, and commitment to national cohesion.
