COAL MINING:LEAVING THE PEOPLE HIGH AND DRY

Coal mining: Leaving the people high and dry

CAN THE GOOD OLD DAYS RETURN FOR NIGERIA VIA  COAL MINING

Local communities and former miners in Enugu State doubt promises of better life when the moribund coal mines begin operations under an initiative kick-started under the last administration of President Goodluck Jonathan.

In 2014 when former Vice President, Nnamadi Sambo visited Enugu he had explained that the signing of a memorandum of understanding with HTG-Pacific Energy Consortium for the development of Ezinmo Coal Block in Enugu would attract investors to coal-fired oil generation opportunities, among others. The initiative was targeted at establishing a 1000 mega-watts coal power plant in the state.

While the focus of the government seemed geared towards attracting investors, the local communities believe the initiative is streaked in secrecy and was being implemented without their consent.

Going the same old path

In the 1920s coal was one of the natural resources that generated revenue for the Nigerian economy and particularly Enugu which was the de facto capital of eastern Nigeria. Coal miners were envied because their jobs were dangerous but went with the acclaim of being a major revenue earner. It was also the conviction of the colonial administration that the coal miners should live in decent apartments. It was on this premise that Colliery quarters in the heart of Enugu housed most of the miners. An added advantage was the nearness of the quarters to Iva Valley (a mining site) which would enable the workers resume work on time.

The discovery of oil in commercial quantity and commencement of export in 1973 instigated the neglect of the coal mines. Just as the coal mines were abandoned so also where the residential quarters housing the former miners and everything that had to do with them including their emoluments.

During the administration of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999 when the NCC was declared insolvent, the situation at the mines and apartments at Colliery Quarters suffered further decline. Today the quarters is nothing more than a ramshackle.

These issues coupled with the renewed attempt to revive the mines informed a town hall meeting organized by the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) In Enugu recently.  At the meeting which had some of the miners in attendance, ERA/FoEN Project officer, Philip Jakpor said:

“Aside the workers, most of whom are now very old, communities that host coal deposits doubt the promises of anything meaningful thing accruing to them. Men who have put in all their lives to make meaningful living from coal mining did not reap the fruits of their hard work. Their immediate families suffered these deprivations with them as the few survivors living in places like the Colliery Quarters have been tricked and ejected”

Jakpor explained that ERA/FoEN had visited the communities and spoken with locals and that the meeting was an opportunity for the locals to air their views on the secrecy surrounding the renewed interest of the government in mining coal.

Going further, he revealed that most of the locals only heard of plans to revive the moribund mines through the pages of the newspaper, adding that the government and Chinese firm did not consult with the people nor carry out and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) before signing the contract for take-off of the project.

A former miner, Modestus Amarachi narrated that the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE) and the Enugu State government have been gradually selling the Colliery quarters to the elite, adding that “they have been doing it in bits so that we will not challenge them a group. In the last instance our colleagues woke up suddenly to see policemen and bulldozers and were forced out”.

He also expressed worry that while the former miners were yet to be paid their emoluments the state government was making arrangements to bring in another firm to continue from where the NCC stopped.

Narrating how the coal mines stopped working and the fallouts, another former miner Augustine Okpara said that things worked well and we made some tangible money in the mines before the Nigerian civil war from 1967 to 1970.

“Then there were expatriates from Poland working side-by-side their Nigerian counterparts. They introduced innovations that made mining operations less risky but as the war was getting close to Enugu they left. Subsequently the infrastructure broke down and were not replaced. We too fled when it was certain the war would affect Enugu”.

Okpara said that after the civil war oil became the new bride of the government and everything in the coal mines collapsed. As it affected the mines so also our abode in Colliery quarters and our emoluments. You saw the state of the environment yourself, he concluded.

Silence from Government

The most worrisome development for the former miners is the failure of the Federal and Enugu governments to adequately inform them and the general public on the on-goings regarding reviving the moribund plants.

They insist that details of the MOU with the Chinese firm –HTG, has so far been shrouded in utmost secrecy, thus fueling the belief that EIA and other grave concerns the locals may raise may have been set aside.

A major revelation from the miners is the fact that about 600 of their colleagues have died while waiting for the arrears of their pensions even as 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.