EIA: Ministry issues 421 certificates in 4 years

The Federal Ministry of Environment has assessed and registered 1,882 projects and issued more than 421 certificates to organisations and individuals involve in the projects from 2012 till date.

Mr John Alonge, the Director, Department of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in the ministry, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Saturday in Abuja.

Alonge said that the ministry had also assessed and implemented more than 1,000 projects in the last three years.

According to him, the number of projects assessed and supervised by the department in preventing environmental hazards is in hundreds; sometimes, it is in thousands and at times, we are looking at it cumulatively.

“Also, in terms of review meetings we have had concerning all the projects, it is almost a thousand.

“The essence of having the meetings is to ensure that the projects we carried out did not result to environmental hazard in the future.

“So, the meetings will help us to review and evaluate the nature of the projects before giving approval to such projects.

“We also monitor the project to see if it will affect the host communities and those who are living around and discuss how it can be implemented.

“But, it is not all the projects registered that get to the conclusion level.

“Some will be registered and along the line, the project will be abandoned and that brings a lot of issues; such issues sometimes go beyond our control.

“For instance, a partner in a particular business may decide to pull out and the project will be abandoned,’’ he said.

The director said that lack of fund was a negative factor in the implementation of projects.

He also said that some of the abandoned projects or delayed in the assessment of any project were caused by the activities of militants.

Alonge said that EIA was also one of the environmental management tools used in project decision making.

He said that the objective of EIA was to prevent environmental problems.