The African Centre for Leadership Strategy and Development (Centre LSD) has called for improvement in the mining rights of host communities across the country to boost revenue and improve security.
Executive Director of Centre LSD, Mr Monday Osasah, made the call in Abuja at the unveiling of a documentary, research and host community mobile app supported by the Ford Foundation.
He said that the documentary, research report and mobile app was among others to bring sustainable development to mining host communities in the country, apart from collaborating with the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development, to ensure that host communities across Nigeria reaped benefits of mining.
“Centre LSD produced a research report on the efficacy of CDAs in mining host communities in Nigeria and a documentary showcasing the marginalisation of mining host communities titled ‘Voices from the Pits’. It also developed a mobile app called hostcommunities. ng created to provide community members with a medium to track and report on CDA projects to hold duty bearers accountable.
“We felt that we have reviewed the CDAs, but how do we also get fillers from host communities in terms of how the CDA is performing at the local level? So what we did was to develop a host community app which will be used by everybody including the media to track the CDA progress.
“This will help the media know the level of development going to mineral-bearing communities as a result of the new guidelines that have come up,” Osasah said.
He said that this would enable people to have the opportunity to give commendations when necessary, and lay complaints where issues are going on in the mining host communities using the app.
The Executive Director, of Centre LSD, Dr Otive Igbuzor, said that mining could play a crucial role in Nigeria’s economic development and has the potential to contribute significantly to revenue generation and job creation.
He said that the impact of mining on host communities has largely been negative leading to environmental degradation, social disruption and economic inequalities.
He said, “It is important to do mining right in a sustainable manner so that government, mining companies, citizens and host communities will benefit from the gains of decent and responsible mining practices.
“This can be done by the government ensuring decent mining that will be beneficial to citizens including future generations and not destroy the environment.”
