DAYO AYEYEMI, in this report, looks at the attempt by the Lagos State government to save communities from environmental abuse by sand dredgers and truck operators with its stop-work order to no fewer than 10 dredging companies along the Lekki-Epe Expressway.
THE Lagos State government has drawn battle lines with sand dredgers and truck drivers whose activities constitute a threat to the environment. The government had asked some dredging firms to stop operation until certain conditions were met.
The state government had, through the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, taken steps to respond to people’s complaints about the bastardisation of their communities by the sand dredgers and truck drivers.
NO fewer than 65 sand dredging companies operate across Lagos State. While some of them are duly licensed by the Federal Government, others are operating in the state illegally and indiscriminately, causing damages to the environment.
Apart from the alleged indiscriminate sand mining activities by the dredgers, communities have accused truck drivers of destroying their roads. Leaders of the affected communities also decried what they called the noise and air pollution by the trucks. They described the manner in which the sand dredgers have been carrying out their operations in the area as unsustainable.
Saturday Tribune gathered that a plethora of complaints by the residents had triggered last week’s decision of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources to issue a stop-work order to no fewer than 10 dredging firms on the Lekki-Epe Expressway. The issuance of the order to one of the five firms at Ilaje Waterfront on the expressway by the ministry’s officials who were accompanied by the police personnel was met recently with resistance by workers at a sand mining site.
The monitoring and enforcement team from the ministry was led by the Director of Solid Minerals, Emillo Cardoso. The workers on the dredging site numbering about 5,000 had challenged the authority of the team to shut down the site. They threatened a backlash if the police shot any of them.
“This is our place of work. We are not afraid of the police and we are ready to kill if anybody stops us from this site,” one of the workers told Saturday Tribune.
After much argument, the crisis was finally settled. The notices of stop-work order were served to no fewer than five dredging companies in the area.
Degradation
From the main road on the Lekki-Epe Expressway, the entire internal roads in Ilaje and Ajah have been damaged allegedly by the truck drivers hauling sand in the environment. This has made the entire routes almost impassable for road users, especially motorists. The story is not different in Awoyaya Waterfront as the entire roads are presently in a sorry state due to activities of dredgers and truck drivers.
From the expressway to two roads leading to the dredging site on the Lagoon front, ditches and potholes dot the landscape. To worsen the matter, all the internal roads are without drainage. Due to the damage of the community’s roads by truck drivers, some landlords in the inner streets have to erect iron barriers on their entrance to ward off haulage trucks.
Residents’ lamentations
A landlord, Mr Saliu Ojo, told Saturday Tribune that due to the nuisance of the truck drivers hauling sand in the vicinity and the attendant noise pollution and bad roads, many tenants had left for other locations.
Another landlord, who did not want his name in print, said the environmental degradation of communities within the axis had become a source of worry to residents. “We cannot move freely in the afternoon. Our children have a hard time going to school. Apart from that, we cannot sleep in the night due to the activities of truck drivers moving out sand,” he said. The residents are called on the government to come to their aid by compelling the dredging companies and truck operators to fix the roads.
Justifying the essence of the stop-work order served the dredging companies, Director of Solid Minerals in the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Emillo Cardoso, said the state government had received many petitions from residents of the host communities on how the dredging firms and truckers in Awoyaya and Ilaje-Ajah had destroyed their land and roads with wet sand.
For this reason, he said his team got a directive from the Commissioner for Energy and Mineral Resources, Olalere Odusote, to stop the people responsible for the damage to the roads and the entire environment from carrying out further activities.
He said: “As you all know, it is government’s responsibility to protect its people. And because of that, we have got a directive from the commissioner in the ministry to go out and stop the people that are causing this damage to our roads.
“We have a full team. We would ensure that people comply with the rules of this state. We will not open our eyes and watch them do this to our roads. As you can see, this is affecting the children in these communities,” he said.
He stated that residents had complaints about the activities of dredgers and truck drivers in these neighbourhoods, pointing out that both landlords and tenants, including children, found it difficult to leave their house for work and school.
“This is not a good thing at all. Some of the landlords also complained that their tenants are leaving for other locations because of the operations of the dredging companies and truck drivers. It is something we must look into,” he said.
Speaking on the confrontation at the dredging site at Ilaje, Cardoso said his team was not out to embarrass anybody but to invite them to a stakeholders’ meeting to explain how their operations should be in the state.
He said: “We are not harassing anybody. As you can see, we are only trying to engage these people in a proper way and try to invite them to a stakeholders’ meeting and explain to them how their operations should be in the state. And if they are not ready to comply, we are going to shut them down for the state to have peace.”
Dredging permit
Further enquiries by Saturday Tribune showed that the Lagos State government did not know the number of dredging firms in the state. It was gathered that the Federal Government, through its agency – the National Inland Water Ways (NIWA) – granted dredging permit in the state.
“They have an agency – NIWA – that is also tasked with that. That is why you would see that their operations do not really bother us. What bothers us is when you are looking at the effects on our environment as a state, and that is what we are trying to control. Inasmuch as you can come to our state to do your business, there are rules that you are expected to follow to protect the state,” the director of solid minerals said.
According to him, some of the dredgers and truck drivers have been urged to follow the state’s regulations of maintaining the roads if they want to continue to operate in the state.
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)
Findings showed that despite claims by the dredging companies to have conducted the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) before commencing operations, no copies of such reports were submitted to the state government.
When asked about their EIA report, most of the operators claimed to have submitted copies to the Federal Government.
Cardoso said that the Federal Government might have licensed the dredging companies but the state government had the responsibility of knowing the number of dredgers within its territory.
Cardoso said: “What the data would do is to know the amount of dredging companies in Lagos. After that, we can now separate the legal operators from illegal ones. Some of them do not have licence; they are just doing it illegally.
“There are lots of things surrounding their operations: discharge of oil, chemicals from heavy-duty trucks to the sea shore. All these have effects on the land and underground water
“We are ready. We are coming out aggressively to ensure that things are done properly in this state.
“It is important for the state to ask for their EIA, from there we can take it up, but we don’t want the Federal Government to see Lagos State Government as attacking it.
“We don’t have problem with the permit, but what we have problem with is people operating in our state. They should not do things wrongly in the state in spite of their licence. If there is any disaster, it is the state government you will see here first,” he said.
Cardoso called for a synergy between the state and federal governments to ensure that sand dredgers are doing it right.
When contacted, NIWA’s Lagos Area Manager, Mrs Sarat Braimah, said officials from the agency had visited the communities and held a meeting with the dredging companies. She added that the affected dredging firms and truck operators had agreed to fix the roads.
Braimah explained that all dredgers in the axis got licensed from NIWA, saying that illegal operators were not expected among them, even as she emphasised that the monitoring team from NIWA always patrolled the environment to checkmate the activities of illegal dredgers.
Besides, she stated that there were guidelines for licensed operators on dredging operations in the state.
The General Secretary, Association of Dredgers, Richard Ntan, said the association would not support illegal dredging, explaining how members underwent proper profiling to operate as dredgers in Lagos State.
He applauded the step being taken by the state government, saying its action was not intended to shut down the dredging sites but to stop trucks from carrying wet sand, positing that haulage of wet sand was responsible for the bad roads.
According to him, Lagos has not stopped dredging activities, giving the assurance that the association would partner with the state authorities and state agencies in charge of dredging.
“If any site refuses to tidy the environment, we will move there to tidy the place. We advise that all members should fix whatever mess found on the roads. We are not supporting anything that will make the government shut down the dredging sites,” he said.
Ntan pointed out that dredging had become a major source of building materials for real estate industry in Lagos State, blaming illegal operators for most of the environmental degradations in the communities, just as he insisted that illegal dredgers did not have licence to operate and were not members of the association.
“Our members support the environmental sanitation of Lagos. Nobody gets permit to sell wet sand; dredgers are not doing haulage, we only dredge and truckers get the sand to individuals,” he said.
He added that the industry was employing more than 50,000 people, saying it was keeping both old and young busy and appealed to the government not to shut down dredging sites in the state.
He said: “When dredging activities were shut at a time, there were robbery and stealing everywhere. We are following the guidelines of the licence issued to us; we are not destroying the environment.
“We are going to shut down intermittently and fix the roads. There is no war between the dredgers and the Lagos State government.”
Environmentalists react
Many environmentalists, in recent reports, decried unchecked mining and dredging which they said had weakened seabeds and depleted subsoils and could increase incidents of building and structural collapse in Lagos.
They identified coastal and soil erosion, loss of aquatic lives, formation of sinkholes, loss of biodiversity, and soil contamination resulting from leakages of chemicals into the soil as some of the adverse environmental impacts of the trade.
Also, a study by the Nigerian Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research revealed that uncoordinated activities by miners and dredgers had caused depths of almost six meters into the seabed as reflected in the Banana Island to Third Mainland Bridge axis.
They also pointed to recent biodiversity survey by a team of ornithologists along the Lagoon in Sangotedo and Badagry areas of the state, which indicated an unprecedented proliferation of dredging activities due to poor coordination and regulation.
The environmentalists want relevant government agencies responsible for stemming the tide to put a halt to it before it becomes a monster that would eventually consume the state.
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