Experts berate government EIA process

The programme, which was organised by Heinrich Boll Stiftung, attracted participants from the coal industry, the academia and government, with a view to analysing Nigeria’s quest to generate power from coal plants.
The discussants were of the view that: “Nigeria has one of the best mining laws, but the implementation of the EIA is flawed as the government office responsible for undertaking it lacks manpower and the technical ability to effectively carry out an assessment.”
Prof. Emmanuel Oladipo, an environmental consultant and one of Nigeria’s lead negotiators at the annual climate change conference said, “Undertaking EIA for EIA sake should not be the norm.”
According to him, the Ministry of Environment needs to increase its members of staff to ensure that competent ones are deployed across the country to monitor developments as there happen in sites already with EIA certificates.
“Most of what you have today from the ministry as EIA are simply junk; hence the need for the ministry to scale up its manpower to undertake Environmental and Social Impact Assessment cannot be over-emphasised,” he added.
Also speaking, Amb. Joseph Ubaka Ayalogu, executive director, Corporate Relations at Eta Zuma Group, said his organisation had to ask for further explanation after an EIA done for their coal exploration in Kogi State revealed that most of the EIA were done by armchair analysts.
“An EIA, no matter how good it is, must be implementable, otherwise it is useless. We need qualified professionals that are dedicated, efficient and competent to do the work,” Ayalogu said.
The participants were of the view that Nigeria was going into coal power as a means of salvaging the situation in the power sector but had not communicated effectively to Nigerians the challenges associated with coal power.
They noted that most coal power plants around the world were being shut, wondering why Nigeria is considering it as an option to the power problems.
The federal government has so far issued seven licenses for the establishment of coal power plants in the country by the private sector.