A university don and award winning engineer, Dr Hilary Owamah has called for the protection of Nigerian communities against mining companies and other extractive industries.
Dr Owamah, who is the Acting Head of the Department of Civil Engineering, Delta State University, Abraka, Oleh Campus, made the call at the weekend during the inauguration ceremony of Oil and Solid Mineral Producing Landlords’ Association of Nigeria (OMPALAN), Delta State Chapter, held Wellington Hotel, Effurun, said that mining and other extractive industries were among the most destructive activities on the planet, especially for indigenous and farming communities.
Owamah who is also the President, Academic Research and Entrepreneurship Development (A-RED) Initiative, and Chairman, Nigerian Institution of Environmental Engineers (NIEE), Asaba Chapter, noted that because the minerals, metals, fuel, and timber that the mining industries seek were very profitable, resisting them requires hard work.
Owamah charged OMPALAN to know, that at stake, was the cultural survival and well-being of their communities, environment, and ability to make a living now and for years to come.
While listing the different categories of mining such as underground (subsurface), open pit, cyanide heap leach, mountain top removal and placer mining, Dr Owamah told the participants that the three stages of mining operations; prospecting, exploration and exploitation all cause serious negative environmental, social and health impacts to host communities.
According Owamah who was the guest speaker on the occasion, there was also the concession (obtaining of permit) and Terms of Reference (TOR) stages, adding, “While the TOR document lays out the social, economic and environmental elements, the environmental impact assessment (EIA) will study, the EIA in detail looks at the possible impacts (positive and negative) that a proposed project may have on the natural and social environment in order to uphold social and environmental standards.”
The guest speaker lamented that oftentimes, EIA was seen just as a document to comply with national laws thereby making contractors to sometimes save time and money by copying another EIA.
He charged OMPALAN members to prepare themselves to challenge in the law courts, on behalf of their communities, concocted EIAs that were non-implementable, reiterated that mining companies were very much aware that they must also get the approval of the local communities before going ahead with projects, which he referred to as the “social license”.
He however went further to say that mining companies were often willing to spend millions of dollars and make endless promises to try to obtain the social license, he added, “They promise to build schools or bridges, provide scholarships, and jobs—whatever they think will appease a community.”
According to the guest lecturer, while some promises were kept, many were not, saying that while a company may continue to make gifts to keep the population pacified, they may in the process create social havoc, violence, and deep divisions within communities and families.
On the part of health, Owamah pointed out that during mining operations, air and water were frequently polluted with toxic chemicals leading to disease and death of birds, fish, animals and humans.
He gave the example of Omai gold mine in Guyana (belonging to the Canadian company Cambior) in 1995, in which four and a half million cubic meters of cyanide-contaminated residual minerals was spilled into the Essequibo River and led to eighty kilometers of the river being declared an environmental disaster zone.
While dust and air pollution cause respiratory illnesses and irritated eyes and skin, especially in children, the university don noted that bad water from mines could poison crops, dozens of miles away from the mines.
Owamah tasked the OMPALAN Delta Chapter to think of an extraction company as a ‘disease’, and their communities as ‘body’ saying that “as in any real disease, the longer you delay taking measures to stop it, the more it can spread and cause damage.”
Dr Owamah opined that if exploration had begun and the company found profitable deposits of valuable metals or petroleum, the government may become much more interested in exploiting the resources, stressing, “It is not unusual for governments to violate their own laws, or create new ones, in the hope of obtaining income from taxes that are promised from mining.”
He charged OMPALAN to organize themselves well in order to be able to influence the process at every step; from preventing projects from starting at all, to getting compensation, to safely shutting down (decommissioning) projects after they have been operational.
He disclosed that organizations to help with funding were available and plenty, urging OMPALAN to also reach out to religious and environmental organizations, local, state and the federal governments and NGOs.
He encouraged the association to always use the law and the political process to address the issues the extractive industries the communities, and harped that adequate funds must be assured to compensate local communities for treating health problems, death, loss of agricultural, fishing, and hunting capability, forced relocation, the loss of livelihood and other negative impacts.
Dr Owamah said that with hard work, patience and persistence, assaults by extraction industries could be defeated, or their negative impact greatly reduced, saying, “The reward for OMPALAN shall be the continued good health of the community and its environment.”
Earlier, the Chairman, Board of Trustees and National Leader of OMPALAN, Bishop Udo Azogu said that OMPALAN was a Federal Government recognized high profile umbrella NGO of stakeholders in the oil, gas and solid mineral industry across the 36 States of Nigeria and the FCT.
He noted that the cardinal objective of the organization was to provide a conducive investment climate for the smooth production of mineral resources in a win-win engagement with development agencies underpinning highest safety standards and corporate social responsibility
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