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Stone-Crushing, Tin-Mining, and Bitumen Deposits in Nigeria By Emeka Inwerogu
STONE CRUSHING IN KADUNA STATE: THE ARTISAN'S DILENMA
The diverse resources in Nigeria and the management of these assets have in the last few years taken the fore in national discourse, shifting government and public interest to other sectors beside oil in a bid to create multiple sources of revenue. As a result, solid minerals now receive immense attention, with discussions centred on control and sustainable uses.
Emerging as a veritable complementary resource is granite, a hard, usually grey rock matter widely used in building and construction. The Federal Ministry of Mines and Steel Development lists granite as a solid mineral, with deposits in the region of billions of metric tonnes, and it can be foundall over the country in states including Ebonyi, Ekiti, Enugu, Kogi, Ogun and Plateau.
Though there are quarrying companies that engage in large scale industrial stonecrushing, indigenous and artisanal stonecrushers have increased over the years, and the activity has become a viable business venture for many. It actually became popular during the early Nok Era – an ancient West African civilisation that disappeared around 300AD – as the need for craft and construction materials increased at the time. The mining of other solid minerals and precious stones may also have paved the way for the now popular trade to commence.
In the face of an economic meltdown during the Nigerian Civil War, stonecrushing became a major income source in the late 1960s, with many peopleengaged in it. Pa Abu Ochono has been crushing stones since 1968.
Working on a quarry site in a remote are in Kaduna State, he said: “We used to buy a truckload (of granite) from the quarry at much cheaper rates, but it now sells for 12,000 naira.”
Sunday David, a third-year mechanical engineering student and a second-generation stone crusher says, “I inherited the business from my mum who is old now. I still live with my parents, but they are incapable of working now, so I use the money I earn from stonecrushing to pay my way through school, and for my personal upkeep.”
As tedious and physically demanding as stonecrushing is, ironically, women and children are the most common participants, spending hours crushing granite and suffering exposure to harsh, unhealthy and unsafe working conditions. But the profits some of them make is enough incentive for them, even though the exercise is mainly subsistent for several others.
“This job keeps me going. It is from the proceeds here that I feed my family. I have built a house, and I am presently saving up to either build another house or get a plot of land,” says Mrs. Haruna, a middle aged woman from Kaduna.
Depending on the size, a bag of crushed stone costs between 200 to 250 naira, and a van costs about 3,000 naira. A 1,500 feet hill [measuring about 457 metres] could sell for an estimated 12 million naira [at 12,000 naira per truckload].
There are attendant personal risks as well as environmental hazards associated with quarrying, starting from the very first activity; rock blasting. The huge, natural-occurring rockfirst has to be broken down into smaller manageable boulders, and this is done by drilling a hole underneath the rock, setting fire to it, and leaving it to burn for as many as three days. This softens the rock, and when it is molten enough, it explodes. Workers are to completely evacuate rock blasting sites to avoid being struck by flying shrapnel.
Even more worrisome is the direct health effect on the workers themselves as Michael Simire, a mining expert goes on to say, “During the quarrying activities, a lot of dust is generated, with some of the dust particles potentially carcinogenic. That means, they have the capability to induce the growth of cancerous cells.”
Decades of unregulated and unsustainable stonecrushing activities also poses an environmental risk, as it rids the soil of its natural protective covering over time, exposing it to erosion and other harmful environmental effects.
Putting all of these into context, Mrs. Benahi Osoba, an environmental consultant, weighs in:
“Now, there is lots of land use; farming, cattle-rearing, and people probably live on these designated mining sites. You talk of land degradation and there are many abandoned mining pits, especially in quarries where they excavate sub-surface. During the rainy season, rainwater collects in these pits, breeding mosquitoes and things like that.
Furthermore, she says, “Apart from that, you tend to have issues with the blasting, with the vibrating affecting people’s homes. And with cracks appearing on the walls, the houses are no longer as durable as they ought to be.”
Nature and wildlife are not spared the harmful effects of unchecked quarrying either, as according to the environmental consultant, “Some of these quarry sites harbour ecosystems – flora and even fauna, and when you remove these (natural) rock formations, you lose these ecosystems.”
“Quarrying is a form of mining,’ he continues. “It leaves the land largely degraded.”
“After the quarrying activities may have ended and the site evacuated, unsuspecting individuals may move into these locations and try to build. And because the land is depressed compared to the general surface area, it is easily flooded. Some of these lands are even geologically unstable, and they could be susceptible to vibrations once in a while.”
The risks and hazards notwithstanding, quarrying is more or less inevitable, and it is an activity that must go on. Mrs. Osoba posits, “… whether we like it or not, there will always be quarry systems because there is development. We need granite to be able to develop. We can’t import when we have it here just because of aesthetics. But now, how much the government agencies are able to control the rate of loss of this goes a long way.”
For this reason, the National Environmental Standards Enforcement Agency (NESREA), a government agency responsible for the protection and controlled development of the environment was set up in 2007. The agency has already drawn up the National Blasting and Quarrying Operations 2013 Regulations, which unfortunately has yet to be passed into law. And until that happens, there will remain regulatory and enforcement gaps of what ought to be done at state and local government levels.
Engineer Olusegun Oladipo, a retired director at the ministry disclosed that “The ministry has tried to organise local miners into mining cooperatives. They have assisted some (of those who have adhered and have come together), and there is still more to be assisted. But one thing is, when these people are organised, big companies will start coming in. And these big companies will not go after the marginal deposits. They will want the big deposits. And when they get the big deposits, they will not be worried about the marginal deposits. These marginal deposits will then be available for the mining cooperatives to mine the mineral and sell it to the companies at a fair price.”
The National Blasting and Quarrying Operations 2013 Regulations, when passed, hopes to address activities in the quarrying industry that might affect the environment, as well as induce penalties on defaulters. Regulatory authorities expect artisans to observe environmental safety standards and ensure the use of personal protective equipment (PPE).
And according to the Nigerian Mineral and Mining Act 2007 and 2011, “Holders must carry out rehabilitation or land reclamation to allow land reuse, and to reduce harmful environmental impact“, because if there is proper follow-up for land reclamation, you tend to have the land back in use.
“Experts could come in and do an assessment of the usability of the land after quarrying; whatever it can be used for. Such results can now tell what the land can be used for. It could still even be used for residential purposes, depending on what you have there. But continuous quarrying activities within the area may be detrimental to health because of the dust particles given out.”
Respiratory problems – cough, shortness of breath and chest pains are common health problems quarry workers face. As such, NESREA has ordered the use of PPE. Unfortunately, none of the workers visited at the site were seen wearing any.
“Sometimes, we have cough,” Sunday David admits. “But then, once we see the doctor, everything is okay. As you can see, I am fine,” he said smiling.
However, everyone admits that, with proper regulationof this alternative means of making a living, workers involved can earn decent wages and turn a profit, whilst also averting drastic environmental impact in the course of their activities.
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TIN-MINING IN PLATEAU: THE DEATH-TRAP SYNDROME
“He was digging and I was watching. But before I knew it, he was gone. A segment of the hole collapsed, trapping him.”
Those were the words of Chungwom Ishaya, a second-generation miner in Plateau State, as he narrated the incident which led to the death of his father who fell into a pit he was digging, while in search of Tin – the rich mineral resource of Plateau. The unprecedented loss of lives occasioned by the artisanal mining of tin in Plateau State, far outweighs its benefits, but many of these local miners who work in very hazardous conditions, choose to ignore the risks while engaging in the practice of mining the mineral stones.
Tin-mining in Plateau, began in October 1904, when the British colonial governmentsent a mineral-survey team to assess the mineral deposits within the region. Tin deposits were discovered in the Jos-Plateau area and foreign companies were allowed by the colonial regime to operate in the territory and mine the resources, using mechanised equipment which helped to curb the risks and prevent the death of the mine workers.
Engr. OlusegunOladipo, a retired Director from the Nigerian Ministry of Mines and Steel, recalled that these mining companies employed indigenes of Jos-Plateau as workers in the mining sites. “Minerals that were being mined on the Plateau then, were taken to Makeri Smelting Company (which was the only smelting company in West Africa at the time). The advantage there was that the by-products that came with tin, were harnessed there”, he said.
However, there soon occurred a “policy change in the 1970s and 1980s” which saw the workers massively retrenched from the companies. Narrating further, Oladipo stated that “these people (the sacked workers) had the experience of how to reach the mineral deposits and bring them out (extraction). It was only a matter of time, before they started recruiting youth to assist them and that formed the nucleus of informal (artisanal) miners in Nigeria”.
Although the local mining was often carried out by able-bodied men and young boys, the women were not left out of the process as they helped to carry the unrefined tin extracted from the pits, to places where they could be washed and made ready for local refining.
In many parts of the world where there has been illegal and unmechanised solid mineral extraction, the resultant effects have posed grave challenges to the health of the people and the environment. Deaths often occur when people fall into a pit while digging it. Some also lose their lives while fetching mineral stones inside a pit, and the pit suddenly collapses, closing in on them. The pits became death traps, as they could collapse at any time, killing as many as five or more miners inside. In addition to the death-consequence, is the devastating effect which artisanal mining has on the environment. Open-pit mining, also known as surface mining, destroys the land. Having not acquired any form of professional training, the informal miners lack the expertise and also the equipment needed to enable them decipher the location of these solid minerals. Hence, they arbitrarily dig the ground in search of the minerals, leaving the landscape riddled with deep gullies and abandoned pits, which have made gully erosion a recurrent threat to the ecosystem of aerial and subterranean habitats in the region. Jos has been described as a lunar landscape because of its deep-sided mounds and multi-coloured lakes.
Nonetheless, the baffling reality of the situation is the seeming lack of interest or capacity of the Nigerian government, to engineer strategic and positive changes to the regulatory regimes for mining in Nigeria by making it a fully-regulated sector. Nnimmo Bassey, an environmentalist of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), put it succinctly, when he stated that, “if Nigeria wants to consider re-opening mines, like the Tin mines of Jos and the Coal mines of Enugu, there has to be very strict regulations”.
It is the responsibility of the Nigerian government to ensure that the industry is adequately-mechanised and international safety standards are observed by the miners. It is also the responsibility of the government to put adequate measures in place for the nation’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) to be significantly boosted with proceeds from a properly- regulated solid mineral sector. There is an urgent need for the diversification of Nigeria’s mono-economy from petroleum to other mineral resources as well as agriculture.The Nigerian government must therefore demonstrate the political will needed to revamp the solid mineral sector into an organised sector that can stimulate significant growth that is sustainable.
Of equally great importance, is the need for the government to embark on the reclamation of lands which were mined years ago and left abandoned. These portions of land have several pits which are no more in use and which need to be closed.
Furthermore, the government must make conscientious efforts to domesticate the Africa Mining Vision (AMV) which has been adopted by the Heads of State of the African Union since February 2009, but has not yet been domesticated in Nigeria.The AMV underscores how mining can be used to enhance development in Nigeria while ensuring the environment is protected. The AMV if domesticated, will integrate into the nation’s industrial and trade policies, mining activities which include not only the extraction of raw materials but also activities relating to the manufacture of finished products from raw materials, in order to further boost the nation’s economy by discouraging the importation of these finished products.
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THE STORY BEHIND NIGERIA’S VAST BITUMEN DEPOSIT
Iriele is a small community situated in Ondo state and the indigenes have high demands for development. Over the years, they have dreamt of the day when bitumen would be exploited, creating job opportunities, infrastructure and economic prosperity. The people of this town consider bitumen as a God endowed heritage which should be harnessed immediately to create jobs, deliver infrastructure and reduce the hardship they face daily. Those dreams have not become reality up till now, denting their hopes and leaving them frustrated as the indigenes of these towns wait endlessly for the government to attract the needed investment. In the light of the foregoing, is the wider debate about Nigeria’s rich mineral reserves and the failure of the government to properly utilize the wealth of the nation to the betterment of lives of the citizenry. This belief is voiced by majority of the ordinary people in this bitumen bearing community including border communities like Agbabu and Ilubirin. Nigeria has the sixth largest bitumen deposit in the world with most of the reserve found in Ondo state. However, there’s a wider debate about Nigeria’s rich mineral reserves and the failure of the government to properly utilize the wealth of the nation to the betterment of lives of the citizenry.
This belief is voiced by majority of the ordinary people in this bitumen bearing community inclu ding border communities like Agbabu and Ilubirin. They have argued that since Nigeria’s crude might no longer generate sufficient revenue to run the nation’s economy, there should be an alternative to fall back on. In the perspective of these pro-bitumen agitators, bitumen is a guaranteed option as Nigeria re-defines its roadmap to economic recovery.
Honourable Afolabi Iwalewa, a lawmaker representing the Irele-Agbabu State Constituency in Ondo State House of Assembly, and one of the key proponents of bitumen thinks that the wobbly situation of Nigeria’s oil is a wakeup call for the exploitation of bitumen: “Any moment from now, crude oil will fade off. Look at what is happening now with the talk of oil theft. Every state is crying now, even the Federal Government is crying that it is not getting what it used to get from oil. What is the Federal Government doing, and why can’t we find another alternative? If crude oil is not going to fetch us what we project (in terms of revenue), why can’t we switch over to bitumen?”
Another standpoint of Honourable Iwalewa’s pro-bitumen advocacy is that the non-exploitation of the resource that is causing people in these communities a lot of trouble because they have to cope with the reality of spills ravaging precious farmlands where bitumen is found so close to the surface that a simple shovel can excavate the glossy black substance.
Bitumen is found in tar sands, which is also a combination of clay, sand and water. A heavy black viscous substance, oil-rich bitumen is extracted from tar sands, which is then refined into oil. The bitumen in tar sands cannot be pumped from the ground in its natural state; instead tar sand deposits are mined, usually using strip mining or open pit techniques, or the oil is extracted by underground heating with additional upgrading.
In essence, it involves a complex process that will certainly disrupt their lives and livelihoods beyond what they can imagine. This is what the people of the bitumen bearing communities in Ondo State are calling for when they appeal for the exploitation of the resource in their soil.
Taking a closer look at the experience of Canada, the biggest producer of tar sands globally, shows that exploitation has actually resulted in serious damage to the local communities and the environment. The clearing of vast area which is a component of the mining process is responsible for the Canadian moon-landscape we see in Alberta, Canada, where large forest with pristine trees that sprawled across its landscape now looks more like a waste land ravaged by the exploration of bitumen.
According to a joint study by the Heinrich Boell Stiftung and Friends of the Earth, Europe titled; Marginal Oil: What is driving oil companies dirtier and deeper? The damage associated with this process includes, “the destruction of the boreal forest and increased pollution, which has impacted the health and livelihoods of indigenous peoples. With countries like Nigeria in mind, where impunity, corruption and weak governance tend to undermine the best intentions, the study further warns that the consequences of expansion of the push for unconventional oil such as bitumen from tar sands are likely to be even more devastating.”
In spite of all of the warnings pointing at the dangers of venturing into tar sands exploitation, especially the apparent impacts of livelihoods of ordinary people due to the far reaching implications for the environment, including the lands and water bodies, the people in the bitumen bearing communities have inclined to brush these opinions aside.
Olofun of Irele, Oba Olarenwaju Lebi, the octogenarian traditional ruler of the Irele community, for instance criticizes talk of possible environmental hazards if bitumen were to be extracted in the area. He brags about of what his realm would look like if development were to prevail, using bitumen as the tool. “If development were to succeed the way the people of this area want it, this town would have looked like Lagos. I say so because bitumen will provide a lot of employment for all the youths in this area, not in Irele alone, but all over the Southern senatorial district and even in the whole of Ondo State. The bitumen deposit here is a very huge one. It is the second largest in the world, according to the survey conducted by some experts,” he enthused.
And on the Canadian experience he explained: “In Canada, they do it in Calgary, and I have been there. They don’t drive away communities, and they replenish the soil. Where they mine the bitumen, they mix the soil with some chemicals, and restore it for the farmers to go back there and farm. And when those people were working here, I talked to them and they told me that even if they have to relocate some communities, they will have to build some fine buildings for them, and that the exploitation won’t affect much of their lands. It is something that they will dig from the ground, and it won’t affect us adversely.”
There’s no doubt that the allure of jobs, development and the improvement they envisage that bitumen development would give to their communities has strengthened their resolve to continue campaigning for the exploration of their God-given wealth. Any attempt to make the pro-bitumen agitators to consider the consequences is usually met with cold shoulders.
However, a geologist at the Federal University of Technology, Akure, Ondo State, Professor Peter Odeyemi offered a much more balanced picture of the realities on the ground. Odeyemi, who was a member of the defunct Federal Government’s Bitumen Implementation Committee (BIC) made a poignant observation when he noted that the mere presence of a resource does not necessarily translate into commercially viable deposits.
“The first thing is that how much is there? We don’t know! We need to carry out further work in that area in the first instance. Secondly, exploration can be carried out by an oil company because bitumen is a hydro-carbon but also there are difficulties (technical difficulties). If an oil company is going to carry out an exploration there, there is an interest, financial one. This company will calculate how much it’s going to get. It will also look at certain technical issues and the ease of exploitation. This is so because although both of them are hydro-carbon, one is easier to exploit than the other.”
“Also how will you exploit without exposing the soil to direct rain fall impact, denudation, erosion and degradation. So they have generation of enlightened professors and everything. The place is highly enlightened and the environmental issues are potent here like in Europe. If you look at the Niger Delta, the people just welcomed oil companies with open hands not knowing that oil companies are devils. They are only interested in profits. They are not in any way interested in environmental sustainability, in flora, in fauna and even in the development of the people.”
He continued: “Our problem is not bitumen; our problem is corruption. What do we do with the money we have been getting from oil? The one we are exploiting, what are we doing with it? The people are getting poorer; there is no electricity, water, healthcare, and education. This is despite the fact that we are making trillions of dollars. So, if we now exploit bitumen and add another trillion, we are just going to multiply the corruption.”
There is no doubt that the exploration of bitumen will have a heavy toll on the environment of Iriele, and neighboring Agbabu and Illubirin Communities in Ondo state. Water will be polluted, farmlands destroyed, large expanse of forest will be brought down and communities destroyed. Is this kind of cost these communities are willing to pay or are their alternative development paths these communities can take that will have more sustainable economic impact? As the federal government plans to diversify the economy, and explore mining of solid minerals as an alternative, there’s no gainsaying that the environment must be protected even as the nation seeks improved economic fortune. |