Greg Odogwu
They were called “the drums of death”. Over 3,500 tonnes of hazardous waste, packaged in innocent-looking barrels, and shipped to an obscure village in Delta State, causing mayhem, igniting national outrage and eliciting global concern. That was in June, 1988; when Nigeria had no comprehensive environmental laws; when we responded to ecological crisis on an ad hoc basis.
An Italian trickster, Gianfranco Rafaelli, claimed he was shipping residual chemicals and raw materials for a proposed fertiliser manufacturing company to Nigeria. He deceived Nigerian authorities and passed through with his toxic shipment. The killer cargo got to Koko Port – in the present Warri North Local Government Area – from Lagos and finally landed in the backyards of Mr. Sunday Nana, a grandson of the legendary founder of the town, Chief Nana Olomu, (both of whom are now late).
As Nana innocently accepted the cargo for safe keep on his land, he unwittingly embraced the Grim Reaper’s cauldron of afflictions. Influenza, fever, and death followed. The rest is now a well-rehashed history.
As if the tragic incident was a fortuitous inoculation, Nigeria came to life with the needed structural institutions and processes not only to tackle the emergency, but to prepare for the future. Through diplomatic channels, our government succeeded in getting the Italian government and the Italian company that was the culprit to lift the toxic consignment out of the country.
The Nigerian government then followed the repatriation of the poisonous waste by organising an international workshop on the environment. The result was the formulation of a National Policy on the Environment. Consequent to that, the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (1988) was created and charged with the administration and enforcement of the environmental law.
Interestingly, being that it was a military regime, a more aggressive approach was deployed in dealing with such man-made, treacherous ecological breach. The government enacted the Harmful Waste (Special Criminal Provisions) Act, 1988, to deal specifically with illegal dumping of harmful waste. From that pedestal, the country evolved its contemporary environmental protection mechanisms and institutions.
Today, agencies like the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency and the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency are offshoots of the FEPA initiative of those days. However, with a current toxic-waste-dumping incident breaking in Koko, 29 years after the Italian affair, the question is whether these agencies are living up to expectation.
Just last week, the Itsekiri Environmental and Human Rights Group, in Delta State, petitioned the Minister of Environment over alleged dumping of toxic and carcinogenic waste materials at Koko, by an oil waste management company named Ebenco Global Link Limited.
The group in a statement by its coordinator, Mr Tony Ede, and two others alleged that the toxic materials were dumped in about four acres of excavated pit in Koko community.
According to the statement, “to verify the toxicity of the contents of the sludge and slurry dumped in Koko, we took samples of storm water, soil, sludge and slurry on January 11, 2017, for scientific analysis. The certificate of analysis obtained from our consultant laboratory and the environmental report prepared by Vertical Options Global Services Limited revealed that the environment around the waste dump site is found to be highly toxic and carcinogenic, as well as highly hazardous to health and environmentally unfriendly. Our petition is, therefore, a clarion call for an urgent intervention by the Federal Ministry of Environment to save the people of Koko from the expected devastating effects of the toxic and carcinogenic waste dumped in the town.”
In the Channels Television report on the issue, a site was shown in a video, said to have been shot by a whistle-blower, depicting the actual burying of toxic-looking sludge and slurry in a fenced property.
However, it has also been reported that the Federal Government has sent a team of investigators to Koko community to investigate the alleged dumping of toxic waste. Mrs Amina Mohammed told correspondents last week in Abuja that the team from the ministry was to secure the site and ensure no more waste was dumped; find out who had contributed to the dumping so it could be contained; and then look at how the toxic waste was able to get into the community’s water in the first place.
There is a troubling aspect to this whole saga. If the Federal Ministry of Environment has just become aware of this toxic material dumping for the first time, then what happens to its supposed presence in the states and local governments? One is troubled that if perhaps Koko community did not raise the alarm, they would have continued receiving the cargoes of death!
Citizens usually assumed that the government knows better; and is staffed by experts who have eagle eyes to identify vital breaches in governance.
Even more troubling is the official reaction of the indicted indigenous company. Responding to the incriminating analysis by the Itsekiri and Human Rights Group, a top official of Ebenco Global Link Limited, Mr Francis Akintunde, had said, “A discharged monitoring/effluent report is usually carried out and the analysis is usually sent to the Department of Petroleum Resources, and Federal Ministry of Environment on a quarterly basis.
“The management of the company is at a loss about this issue, the claim by the proponent of this unfortunate saga that the result of the sludge analysis indicates toxicity is at variance with the statutory regulations of the government regulatory agencies. The so-called analysis purportedly carries out was not in the presence of the relevant regulatory agencies, representatives of Ebenco Global Link Limited, Koko community and other stakeholders.”
He pointed out that the chairman of the council, community leaders and stakeholders had visited the company to see things for themselves and were satisfied with its operations.
The issue I have with Akintunde’s defence is that in referring to the company’s Environmental Impact Assessment, he tacitly said: “The EIA of our new site is ongoing”.
I ask, how can the environmental impact assessment “be ongoing” for a company that is already doing business that is heavily impacting on the environment? It is like counting the bullets of soldiers when the battle is already on.
Secondly, nobody can obfuscate the real issues with name dropping. He mentioned the people who had witnessed the company’s activities and “are satisfied that it is environmentally friendly”. In Nigeria, we already know that a lot of people, be they traditional rulers and government officials, can still be persuaded to look the other way or give a wrong testimony. Many people have a price.
I think Nigerians should be aware that environment-related businesses all over the world know what the environment really means. The truth is that the stake is high; but we are yet to know the stakes. That is why some of us can afford to sell our ecosystem for peanuts.
History is repeating itself. Locally. Koko was once a dumptown, from an international perspective. Today, it is still singing the dumptown’s dirge, now from a local perspective. Instructively, the company from where the toxic waste is allegedly transported to Koko is “Escravos” – Portuguese word meaning slaves.
The indigenous company that collects and buries toxic material in Koko is blinded to its eco-responsibilities by the monies it rakes in. That was exactly what drove the Calbert Brothers who shipped the drums of death to Koko three decades ago. Then, as safety laws in Europe and the US pushed toxic disposal costs up to $2,500 a ton, it found easy money in shipping to Africa at as low as $3 a ton!
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