Much ado about coal mining

Much ado about coal mining

By Ebere Anyanwu, Enugu

Coal Mining was one of the backbones of Nigeria's Economy before the advent of Petroleum

The Federal government’s plan to establish a 1000 mega watts coal power plant in Enugu state may be good news for big businesses touted as likely beneficiaries of the project but not so much for local communities that believe the project is being implemented without their input and information on likely environmental impacts.

Their fears were not captured in a speech by Vice President Nnamadi Sambo during his recent visit to the state where he said that the signing of a memorandum of understanding for the development of Ezinmo Coal Block in Enugu is a symbol of the growing synergy between the Ministries of Mines and Steel Development and Power to attract investors to coal-fired oil generation opportunities.

The MoU was signed between the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development and HTG-Pacific Energy Consortium for the development of the Ezinmo Coal Bricks.

But for the local communities and former miners promises of better life ahead were not new and hold no attraction.

They readily point to the tragic fate of former miners as classic examples of what so-called investments in the state’s vast coal deposits portend.

How it all began

After years of hiccups in operation stemming from old and obsolete equipment, the Nigeria Coal Corporation (NCC) was closed by the Federal Government in 2005.

Until then, coal found little use in Nigeria and held little prospects from young school leavers who knew too well how the old coal miners were used and dumped. The closure of the NCC by the Obasanjo administration left former miners in the cold.  Today most of them feel cheated, discouraged and gloomy because they have nothing to show for the decades of hazardous work added to environmental degradation their immediate communities suffer.

It will be recalled that the Enugu Coal Camp boomed when the state was the capital of the then Eastern Region. The camp was built by the British colonialists to house miners who came not only from the South East but also from different parts of the country.

Coal Camp today is a relic of the past. It is unlike in the 1920s through the period before the Nigerian civil war in 1967 when coal was a key resource that generated revenue for the Nigerian economy. The colliery quarters within the coal camp was the abode of most of the miners who were envied at that time in Enugu. Its proximity to Iva Valley where a mine exists was to enable the workers report promptly to duty.

 At inception these quarters located at Iva Valley and Coal Camp were properly built with well laid lawns and path ways.

When oil replaced coal in the early 1970s, the conditions both at the coal mines and the residential quarters began to decline. By the time the Federal Government officially declared the coal corporation insolvent in 1999, the infrastructure at Colliery Quarters started deteriorating to such an extent that today, the colliery quarters is no longer fit for human habitation.

Aside poor sanitary conditions, the only road that cuts through the squalor is filled with craters and is totally impassable especially during the rains. Cracked mud buildings litter the entire landscape.

According to Elijah Nwosu, a former coal mine worker, “The abrupt end of coal mining and the fact that government refused to pay us what they owe even till date is what led to the decline of not only the buildings and environment, but also our living standards.

 “The Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE) has been selling our quarter’s gradually. Recently the Enugu State government went a step further by demolishing some of the buildings and forcefully evicting the old miners. Why did they not sell the buildings to the former miners and then get them to build modern houses there?”, he lamented.

A peep at Colliery Quarters

At the Iva Valley colliery quarters, the most visible welcome is the crater-riddled road that reminds the visitor that the environment had long lost anything called government attention. At a point the quarters used to be one of the most prestigious residential areas in the state. But that was long ago. It is now a place meant for the subjugated; people who have no meaningful livelihood and the forgotten in society.

Another unmistakable feature of this environment is the array of rusty roof which shared the same color as the red earth. Combined, they gave the quarters a mournful look.

A nostalgic Augustus Okpaleke who was worked as chief security officer at the time mining was prestigious said “the environment here used to be neat and quiet. Iva Valley was the most beautiful place in Enugu at the time. Those days sanitary inspectors used to disinfect the environment, bring new refuse bins and repair the toilets if they needed repairs. That was in the 1950s and 60s.

He explained that the decline started during the civil war in 1967 when the Polish workers and other expatriates left Nigeria, even as he added that “The equipments that broke down were not replaced and all of us fled when the war started coming close.”

Civil Society Position

Several groups have demanded a halt in the plans to revive the moribund coal plants in Enugu and the rehabilitation of houses at the Colliery quarters.

Two groups - Neighborhood Environment Watch (NEW) and the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) are of the view that the communities stand to benefit nothing from the revitalization of the mines.

ERA/FoEN Project officer, Philip Jakpor said: “We have visited the communities that host coal deposits and spoken with them. We have listened to the former miners and recorded their frustrations. If men and women who have put in all their lives to make something from coal mining were shortchanged through denial of their emoluments and forced eviction from their homes like happened at the Colliery Quarters then what do you expect from a project touted as beneficial yet the details are not in the public domain?”

Jakpor revealed that the group in concert with other civil society groups had interrogated the locals at a fact-finding townhall meeting earlier in the year and that the locals had voiced their opposition to hearing about the new deal only in the newspapers and not from any government official or representatives or the said Chinese investor.

“As usual, this is another attempt to hoodwink the people by sale of their land to the Chinese firm,” he said.

Kelechi Okezie of NEW also doubts the anything good will come out of the mining operations planned for Enugu.

“We have worked with several communities across the South East, particularly in Ebonyi where limestone mining has caused serious havoc and still does. Enugu is no exception going by our findings. It is the same promises of jobs, good roads, houses etc but the state of the former miners and the environmental degradation inherent should be pointers to what is to come”

Deafening Silence from Government

The most worrisome development that the locals and former miners find hard to contend with is the failure of the Federal and Enugu governments in carrying them along in the entire process.

The deal with the Chinese firm –HTG, has so far been shrouded in utmost secrecy which fuels the belief among the locals that such prerequisite as Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and other grave concerns may have been jettisoned by the government.

On the part of the miners, the revelation that about 600 of their colleagues have died while waiting for the arrears of their pensions has further fuelled their anger at the way the government is going about the coal project.

Chairman of the NCC chapter of the Nigeria Union of Pensioners, Comrade Gregory Eze, recently said that it hard to believe that after laboring for years with almost nothing to show, the government was still going ahead to sell their houses bits by bits to forestall collective action.

While the people look with foreboding on the promises of the government on the materialisation of the supposed benefits of coal mining in Enugu only time will tell how far they will take their destinies in their own hands in getting their way.