A study conducted by the Leadership Initiative for Transformation and Empowerment (LITE-Africa) has identified human rights abuses, child labour practices and environmental violations as major issues generating conflicts in Nigeria’s extractive industry.
Years of operations in the extractive industry have resulted in many environmental and social abuses including gas flaring, oil spillages, erosion, and significant negative impacts on the livelihoods of people within the radius of exploration and extraction.
Mining companies have been accused of complicity in human rights abuses in Nigeria. Illegal mining and oil bunkering (oil theft) is widespread in Nigeria. It comes with its attendant problems of environmental degradation, child labour and other human rights abuse.
The study focused on eight local government areas in Abia, Akwa-Ibom, Bauchi, Gombe, Kaduna, Lagos, Rivers and Zamfara States.
The project was sponsored by DCAF – Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance, UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office jointly with the Peace and Human Rights Division of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs through the DCAF Security and Human Rights Mechanism (SHRIM).
LITE-Africa said it also partnered with the Nigeria Working Group (NWG) on Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights (VPSHR) and National Human Rights Commission in carrying study meant to assess risks, challenges and gaps in the respect for the security and human rights of communities in the Northern and Southern regions of Nigeria, by mining, oil and gas operators.
Speaking at the presentation of the report in Abuja on Thursday, the Manager Administration, Tolu Oyero who represented the Executive Director, said that the regional baseline study report provided a contextual analysis of the challenges, limitations, and drivers of human rights violations.
For the northern region, we carried the study in Bauchi, Gombe, Kaduna and Zamfara states while in the South it was conducted in Lagos, Abia, Akwa Ibom and Rivers states.
Speaking on the findings of the group, he said: “One common thing in mining in the North, is that there is preponderance of under aged labour mainly due to the lure of money being paid by operators and there is little or no safety equipment available for them.
“If you see some them, their skin is in a pitiable form. Also, there is a lot of environmental violations. When they finish mining, the sites are not remediated.
“The mining sites are abandoned and thus posing dangers to life of the people living in the areas.
“For instance, in some states like Kaduna and Zamfara, the companies that operated there relocated the communities from ancestral lands because of the solid mineral deposits there but the places they took them to were not enough to accommodate them.”
Oyero said that another bad practice observed during the study was in Bauchi State where a foreign company acts as off taker of the proceeds from the mining activities, but preferred to keep a distance to avoid being held accountable for violations and conflicts generated during the mining operation.
“The companies clearly avoid any avenue of the aggrieved communities holding them directly accountable for infractions by using the local people as middlemen. So, they let the people fight and destroy themselves in these mining communities.
“In the oil and gas being drilled in the southern part of Nigeria, the major violations were oil spillages and pollution that has to do with gas flaring. Rivers State has more of such incidents,” he said.
He said that report also captured data on key stakeholders and highlighted security and human rights issues in the mining, oil and gas sectors in the northern and southern parts of Nigeria respectively.
According to Oyero, the findings have resulted in targeted sectoral recommendations useful for policy makers and other critical stakeholders to advance human rights agenda, enhance business and human rights issues, and further aid regional implementation of the Voluntary Principles Initiative in Nigeria.
“The findings and recommendations are intended as a guide for the development of a national policy framework for more effective regulation and oversight of the extractive industry.
“Special emphasis is canvased to increase awareness and knowledge of the VPs in Nigeria, improve implementation of regulatory frameworks and standards, promote the enforcement of laws and improve respect for rights holders living around company operations,” Oyero added.
Onyebuchi Ezigbo
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