Lithium in Nigeria and Gold: Deposits by State, Geology

Lithium in Nigeria occurs mainly in rare-metal pegmatites, coarse granitic dykes that carry the lithium minerals spodumene and lepidolite together with tin and tantalum ores. They run in belts through the north-central and south-western basement, from the Wamba area of Nasarawa State through Kogi, Ekiti and Ondo to Osun, and in a western belt from Zamfara and Kaduna through Niger, Kwara and Oyo. Gold sits in the same basement, mostly in the schist belts of the north-west and south-west.

Try it: Pegmatite dyke lithium screen: tonnes, Li₂O and lithium metal →

So, does Nigeria have lithium? Yes, in the geological sense: lithium minerals are well documented in the pegmatites. Whether it has commercially proven lithium deposits is a different question, and the honest answer has changed over time. This guide keeps the two apart. It covers the states, the geology and the processing plants, then turns to gold, and ends with how a licence holder can rank ground before spending on field crews. Title and licensing questions are covered in our Nigeria Mining Cadastre Office and mineral title guide. For gold deposit types and field signs in general, see our gold prospecting guide.

“In Nigeria, lithium minerals occur with cassiterite and columbite-tantalite in rare-metal pegmatites.”

Where lithium in Nigeria is found, state by state

Two sources give the geography. The first is geological. In The Conversation’s June 2022 explainer, Garba describes pegmatites that stretch from the Wamba area of Nasarawa State through Egbe-Isanlu in Kogi State and the Ondo-Ekiti area to Ife-Ilesa in Osun State, with another belt in the western half of the country from Zamfara and Kaduna States through Niger and Kwara States to Oyo State, and occurrences at Obudu in Cross River State. Within these belts, he notes, dozens of rare-metal pegmatite occurrences are recorded and some carry lithium minerals.

The second is official. When the Federal Government inaugurated a lithium processing plant in Nasarawa State in July 2026, Nairametrics reported the states identified with lithium deposits as Kogi, Nasarawa, Kwara, Ekiti, Cross River, Oyo, Plateau, Kaduna, Bauchi, Niger, Edo and Taraba, plus the Federal Capital Territory.

The geology behind the belts

Nigeria’s pegmatites lie in the Precambrian basement complex. Research on the north-eastern Nasarawa area places them within the Pan-African remobilised belt along the Eggon-Wamba axis, where the complex pegmatites are made mainly of albite, muscovite and quartz, with accessory garnet, tourmaline, beryl and cassiterite-columbite-tantalite. Garba’s summary is that economic lithium comes from two minerals, spodumene and lepidolite, found in rare-metal pegmatites and greisens, and that in Nigeria these minerals occur with cassiterite and coltan. That association is why historic tin and tantalum districts are the natural first place to look for lithium ore in Nigeria; our tin exploration guide to cassiterite in granites and placers covers the tin side.

Lithium discovery in Nigeria: what the grades mean

The headline that started the recent interest was about grade. According to Garba, the Nigerian Geological Survey Agency (NGSA) described the lithium found as high grade because samples contained between 1% and 13% lithium oxide, whereas exploration normally begins at levels as low as 0.4%. He also gives the scale of production then: in 2019 Nigeria’s total lithium production reached 50 tonnes, against 1,200 tonnes in Zimbabwe the same year.

The 6% benchmark comes from Geoscience Australia’s resource review, which calculates lithium production assuming 6% Li₂O in spodumene concentrates. It is a useful yardstick: selected samples at 1% to 13% are rich rock, but a mine feeds a plant with whole-dyke averages, and a concentrate has to reach a saleable specification. Garba estimates that fully exploring a small to medium deposit and taking it to production can take 5 to 10 years without unforeseen problems.

How to check a claim about lithium in Nigeria

Claims about lithium in Nigeria arrive through press releases, social media and brokers offering ground. A short checklist separates geology from sales talk:

• Which mineral? Spodumene and lepidolite are the economic lithium minerals Garba names. A pegmatite with only mica, feldspar and quartz may carry little lithium.
• What kind of sample? Grab, chip, channel or drill core, and who took it. Only the last two describe a dyke.
• Which laboratory? Ask for the certificate, the method and the detection limits, and check that Li₂O rather than Li is being reported, or convert.
• What title covers it? Check the licence on the Mining Cadastre Office’s eMC+ system and confirm it is in good standing.
• ⚠ Beware “lithium ore for sale” offers without a title number, an assay certificate and a location you can visit.

None of this is specific to one state. Lithium in Nigeria has been reported across a dozen or more states, so the same questions apply in Nasarawa, Kwara or Ekiti. What changes is the district history: in old tin fields, workings and tailings may already expose the pegmatites, while elsewhere the first job is simply finding the dykes.

Estimating what a single dyke could hold

A pegmatite is roughly a slab: strike length times width times depth. That makes a first-pass tonnage easy to estimate, and it also shows how quickly grade and continuity dominate. The calculator uses the benchmarks above; every input is yours to change.

From pegmatites to processing plants: lithium in Nigeria since the find

By July 2026, the Nigeria lithium discovery story had moved from sample grades to processing plants. In January 2026, the Federal Ministry of Information reported the Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake, saying a US$600 million lithium processing plant in Nasarawa State was ready for commissioning, alongside a gold refinery operating in Lagos and three more in development. On 2 and 3 July 2026, reports covered the inauguration of a lithium processing plant owned by Diamond New Energy Company at Endo in Nasarawa State, with a daily capacity of 6,000 tonnes and annual capacity of 3 million tonnes.

Who is building the plants

Reports of the Endo inauguration differ on detail, which is itself a lesson in reading news about lithium in Nigeria. Nairametrics named Diamond New Energy Company Ltd as owner. Semafor described a US$250 million plant in Nasarawa State run by the Chinese companies Jiuling and Canmax, with capacity for 3 million tonnes of lithium ore a year, and reported that Chinese firms invested about US$1.3 billion in Nigerian lithium processing between 2023 and 2025. Semafor also noted that officials hope the facility will support lithium battery manufacturing. Both reports agree on the location and on a capacity of about 3 million tonnes a year.

Policy explains the shift. The same reports describe a local value-addition policy under which the government discourages raw mineral exports in favour of domestic processing. For anyone with lithium in Nigeria on their licence, that matters: the likely buyer for spodumene or lepidolite ore is increasingly a domestic plant, and the terms that plant sets will shape what counts as ore.

The wider market frames it too. The USGS lithium summary lists Nigeria among the countries where mineral-based lithium sources were in development or exploration in 2025, alongside Ghana, Mali, Namibia, Rwanda and Zimbabwe in Africa. It does not yet list Nigerian mine production. Zimbabwe produced an estimated 28,000 tonnes of lithium content in 2025 and Mali 9,400 tonnes, the nearest hard-rock comparisons.

Gold deposit in Nigeria: the schist belts and the states

Gold in Nigeria is overwhelmingly a basement story too. The Ministry’s mining sector investment brochure describes a Precambrian basement with NE-SW trending schist belts developed mostly in the western half of the country, and lists gold among the minerals in commercial quantities for a long list of states. Gold was also one of seven strategic minerals the Ministry chose for priority development.

States with gold deposits in Nigeria

The brochure’s state table names gold for Adamawa, Borno, Cross River, Edo, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Kogi, Kwara, Niger, Ondo, Osun, Zamfara and the Federal Capital Territory, with Zamfara listed for both gold and alluvial gold. That is a 2016 list of potential, not of reserves, but it is the Ministry’s own and a sensible starting map.

• North-west: Zamfara, Kebbi, Katsina, Kano and Kaduna, where schist belts such as Maru and Anka carry the best-known occurrences.
• North-central: Niger, Kogi, Kwara and the FCT, including the Kushaka and related belts.
• South-west: Osun and Ondo, with the Ilesha schist belt in Osun the main hard-rock district.
• Elsewhere: Edo, Cross River, Adamawa and Borno appear on the list with fewer published studies.

What the gold looks like geologically

A 2021 study of the Malumfashi schist belt in north-western Nigeria sums up the style: gold hosted by metasedimentary units within schist belts, mesothermal in type and linked to metamorphic processes during the Pan-African orogeny, with pyrite, chalcopyrite, galena and minor sphalerite. Gold favourability in that area correlated strongly with ENE-WSW and NNE-SSW trending structures. The authors also describe artisanal miners digging pits around quartz and schist margins and panning sediments near laterites, which is how much of the country’s gold has historically been won.

Gold in Osun State and the first industrial mine

Gold in Osun State means the Ilesha schist belt, and since 2021 it also means Segilola. In its first gold pour announcement, Thor Explorations reported pouring gold at Segilola on 30 July 2021 and described it as Nigeria’s first commercial gold mine: a high-grade open pit with a planned processing rate of 715,000 tonnes a year, targeting about 85,000 ounces of gold a year at commercial production. It is named here as a mining example in the state, nothing more.

Where lithium and gold overlap

Osun State shows how the two stories meet. Garba’s pegmatite belt ends at Ife-Ilesa, and the Ilesha schist belt hosts the state’s hard-rock gold, so a single licence in that corridor can carry both pegmatite and schist-belt targets. Kogi, Kwara, Niger and Kaduna appear on both the lithium and the gold lists too. For explorers, that argues for assaying pegmatites and quartz veins for the full suite from the first field visit, rather than running separate programmes for lithium in Nigeria and for gold on the same ground.

Licences, data and a practical exploration sequence

All mineral titles in Nigeria are administered by the Mining Cadastre Office (MCO) under the Nigerian Minerals and Mining Act 2007, within the Ministry of Solid Minerals Development. Applications run through the online eMC+ cadastre, titles are granted on a first-come, first-served basis, and areas are counted in cadastral units of about 20.25 hectares. An Exploration Licence can cover up to 200 km², a Small Scale Mining Lease up to 3 km² and a Mining Lease up to 50 km². Fees change, so confirm them with the MCO before paying; our guide to Nigerian mineral titles has the details.

Sequence for a lithium or gold licence

1. Confirm title. Check the licence boundary and status on the cadastre, and that fees are paid.
2. Pull government data. NGSA geological maps and airborne magnetic data are the regional base; the Malumfashi study used both.
3. Screen the whole licence from orbit. Map pegmatite swarms, schist-belt structure, alteration and old workings, and rank zones.
4. Walk the ranked zones. Map dykes and quartz veins, and sample across full widths, not just the richest spots.
5. Assay the right suite. Lithium, tin, tantalum and caesium for pegmatites; gold plus pathfinders such as arsenic and copper for schist-belt targets.
6. Trench and drill the targets that survive, then test metallurgy for spodumene or lepidolite early.

Where our satellite screening fits

Step 3 is our part. Our satellite-based mineral detection analyses multispectral and hyperspectral imagery of your licence, where each mineral and alteration zone has its own spectral signature, and flags likely mineralised target zones, alteration halos, faults and fractures and deposit-associated patterns. For lithium in Nigeria that means mapping pegmatite-bearing ground and structures across the licence; for gold it means shear zones, alteration and structural intersections in the schist belts. The output is ranked exploration targets, not a resource.

Pegmatites are often narrow, pale and weathered into low ridges or rubble, so imagery works best as a way to find swarms and trends that field crews then walk. Where lithium in Nigeria sits in old tin and tantalum districts, imagery also picks out the pits, dumps and cleared ground left by earlier mining, which point straight at opened dykes worth sampling for lithium.

• What you send: coordinates, KML/KMZ or a polygon, plus the country and target minerals.
• Turnaround: 5–20 business days depending on area size and mineral complexity.
• 📊 Deliverables: high-potential zones, prospectivity heatmaps, estimated location and depth ranges, geological interpretation, and PDF plus georeferenced GIS files.
• 📊 Premium+: TargetMax™ Drilling Intelligence with drilling-angle recommendations and 3D subsurface models of veins and mineral distribution.
• Economics: timelines from months to days and up to 80–85% lower early-exploration cost, with no ground disturbance.

We have scanned 100,000+ hectares for 20+ mineral types in 25+ countries. Draw your licence on mining.farmonaut.com: Map Your Mining Site, see a sample of satellite-driven 3D mineral prospectivity mapping, or ask for pricing through the mining query form.

“In 2019, Nigeria’s lithium production was about 50 tonnes; Zimbabwe’s was 1,200 tonnes.”

Frequently asked questions

Reviewed September 2026 against The Conversation’s June 2022 interview with geologist Ibrahim Garba, the Federal Ministry of Information’s January 2026 release, Nairametrics’ July 2026 report of the Endo plant inauguration, the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 lithium chapter, Geoscience Australia’s resource review notes, the Ministry of Solid Minerals Development investment brochure, the 2021 Malumfashi schist belt study, Thor Explorations’ Segilola first-gold release, Semafor’s July 2026 report, and the Mining Cadastre Office’s published title rules.

Deposits and projects are named only as geological or industry examples from those sources; Farmonaut did not discover them. Grades quoted are sample or dated figures, not resources. Fees and policies change: confirm with the Mining Cadastre Office. Satellite targets are exploration targets and must be confirmed by sampling and drilling. Nothing here is investment advice.