- Flouts Mining Regulations, Devastates Environment
- Entrenches Conflict, Violence Over Compensation In Once Peaceful Host Communities
Read Part 1 here
In this second and concluding part of our investigative report, THEOPHILUS ADEDOKUN details how 18 indigenous communities and Otukpo, the traditional headquarters of Idoma land in Benue State are in serious danger due to pollution from coal mine sites operated by Dangote Coal Mines Ltd, a subsidiary of Dangote Group. Part 1 of this report exposed how deadly contaminants like Lead, Arsenic, Mercury and Cadmium flushed from the mining sites found their way into rivers that are key water sources for these communities in Benue South Senatorial district. This report also exposed the flouting of both global and National (Nigeria’s) environmental and mining regulations/standards by Dangote while unravelling how the company, in connivance with the Benue State Ministry of Land disingenuously adopted the Ghana Mining Act to defraud host communities.
Host but lost communities
TALES from the immediate host communities of Dangote Coal Mines Ltd – Effeche and Abache – are heart-breaking! Findings by National Record indicate that the two communities have not only lost their pre-mining environmental beauty and serenity but even more their pre-mining social and cultural harmony – all to the destructive and disruptive activities of Dangote Coal Mines Ltd.
Though they were promised prosperity, and they momentarily believed; but in reality, the communities now wallow in unplanned, most unexpected poverty due to the obviously wily and wilful exploitative tendency of the multi-billion-naira conglomerate, with impacts far-reaching.
The gravity of the social, economic and health challenges the two host communities, and their neighbouring rural Edumoga communities, are passing through is intricately linked to Dangote’s ongoing coal exploration posing an emerging present and future of regret and pain.
Findings by National Record at the mine site in Abache revealed that the once reportedly lush landscape and fertile farmlands have been disfigured since commencement of mining activities by Dangote Coal Mines Ltd, littered with pits burrowed in the course of the strip or surface mining of coal.
Mounds of tawny soil surrounded the site as each scooped-out remained fresh. It reflects a depression as if a giant hand had reached inside the earth and turned it inside out, with hectares of land stripped bare of vegetation leaving bloody-red-brown sandy mountains of soil and craters in between.
Apart from the water predicament that is peculiar to the communities, pollution in the host communities, blasting with dynamite, dust and erosion are now the norm; making natives vulnerable to hostile elements, diseases and life tougher for the people.
There are no obvious benefits of the mining, either in Abache – or Effeche which was struck before it – be it electricity, potable water, access roads, or health facilities. Coupled with this is the tragic fact that coal mining has contaminated every water source within and beyond the two communities. Worse for the two communities, especially Abache, is that, as immediate hosts, building collapses are rampant due to shocks from blasts.
A youth leader in Abache, ThankGod Onuh, lamented the unceasing blast from the coal mine, which he said caused several buildings in the village to have significant cracks. He told this reporter that the only thing Dangote Coal Mines Ltd provided for them was a borehole. He said unfortunately facility ceased to function a few months after it was drilled and installed.
“You can see that we are patching our houses. We even have a semi-flat that collapsed because of dynamite. There is no concrete development that the community has achieved. This borehole was constructed three years ago and the truth is that it brought out water instantly but stopped within a few months and we told them to come and repair and there has not been a response.”
National Record discovered remnants of crumbled buildings due to dynamite explosions. The mark of the destructive dynamite is in every home – gaping walls that were either recently coated with cement or which have fresh cracks, indicators that Abache is under threat by Dangote’s coal exploration.
Although former Senate President, Senator Ameh Ebute had, on behalf of aggrieved communities, sued Dangote at the Makurdi Division of the Federal High Court, and had got a mildly favourable judgement in their favour, but the N500 million compensation for damages caused by Dangote that he demanded was not granted but ordered that the company should compensate the community with a meagre sum of N10 million naira. The matter has been crossed appealed by both plaintiff and defence and ongoing.
The community is however pessimistic about any favourable outcome. Onuh said chances of winning any legal battle or demands from Dangote seem unrealistic. “They are telling us that Dangote is a big man and we cannot fight him. We don’t have money to fight him and he is wealthy and can do whatever he feels like for the community,” Onuh said despondently.
The questions of CDA
Though mining has been on in Abache for over three years, there has yet to be a written agreement between Dangote and the host community, says Mr Michael Ogu, the secretary of Abache Community. This is despite a statutory provision that it is mandatory that a Community Development Agreement (CDA) must be signed to guarantee the corporate social responsibility of a firm to its host community.
Emphasising that the company connived with some community members to have a verbal agreement in place of a negotiated and duly written and signed CDA, Mr Ogu denied the existence of a CDA document. He said those community members have been ostracised.
“What happened was that some of our members betrayed us with a verbal agreement with the company and they are members of this community and they are our brothers. We are separated as we are speaking because there is no written agreement and nothing like that was done. Dangote only promised that they would do it and that is why we are having a clash with Dangote. We have stopped their work for over two months now and they are in their fourth year of mining without CDA,” Ogu told National Record recently (September).
Across every community – from Effeche, where mining began, down to the communities downstream affected by water pollution, the tales of duplicity of the management Dangote Coal Mines is the same.
Impacts of environmental devastation
Both host communities – Effeche and Abache – also complained about the radical alteration of their socio and economic ways of life which is farming and commerce. Farm lands have been taken over and also gone with them are also economic trees. Economic trees such as cashew and palm plantation and other cash crops planted along the rivers Okollo and Umabe have all been killed by contaminants that found their way from the mining sites. Farmlands and economic trees spared from strip mining, especially those along Rivers Okollo and Umabe, become casualties of mine-induced floods and chemicals which withered them.
Christopher Idengeli, a septuagenarian farmer, expressed, with a markedly sad smile, disappointment about how contaminants from water had affected his health and farm. “The flood from Dangote has caused a lot of damage to our economic trees like palm trees, cashews and bananas; they are being killed and most of them have died, including cassava farms, and we have not been given compensation concerning that.”
He lamented that their land had lost fertility, a situation he said has directly affected their feeding. “Most of our land is grabbed or polluted [by the company] and our land has lost its fertility. The way we feed these days cannot be compared to days before Dangote. Most of these crops, our farm produce, are being consumed by us here. But since there is not much land to farm and we that feed three times before cannot afford three square meals now. Our body is not as free as before, we are now thinking about our survival,” Idengeli grieved.
He noted the ironic twist; that the wealth from there is soil being used to power plants that generate billions of naira in revenue, while they languish in imminent hunger, hardship and generalised misery.
Moraine Idengeli, a 68-year-old farmer, said she lost all her farmland to flash flood as a result of water released from the mine site. Since then, she no longer knows peace because that polluted plot was all that was left of the hectares she owned. The remaining little plot that she farms on are also disturbed by run-off contaminants and pollutants.
“I recently had an operation and I’m still recovering. I am the one begging them to compensate me for my yam, water yam, cassava, corn,” Moraine said dejectedly, further alleging that they were prevented by Effeche-Akpali’s traditional ruler, Samuel Ameh, from obtaining and accessing their compensation and annual compensation. “I am not happy; I don’t have money to buy from the market or sell food commodities. Akpali people blocked us from accessing Dangote [compensation] and called themselves the land owners. We were blocked from receiving palliatives and compensation. I have been begging the representatives of Dangote for my benefits,” she said.
Entrenched conflict over land ownership
Farmers who cannot cope with the dwindling farm produce and hunger, are forced to migrate from their ancestral homes in search of livelihood elsewhere, multiple interviews by National Record revealed.
Some members of the community claimed that they did give consent to Dangote to mine but needed to be properly compensated before they could do so based on the provisions in the CDA and NMMA regulations.
Mr Paul Akaji bemoaned that their community does not only lack basic infrastructure, many of them have ended up in penury with the forcible takeover of their property by Dangote. Noting that his clansmen have been under continuous violence from neighbouring communities as a result of the land ownership tussle between Effeche and Akpali, Mr Akaji lamented that Mr Samuel Ameh has been evicting his clansmen through assault claiming that Effeche was not their home.
Findings by this reporter show that these evictions have forced some hitherto indigenous members of the host communities to leave their ancestral land in search of homes elsewhere. “They didn’t compensate me but they gave my uncle some amount and I bought a motorcycle from that money. However, the other community head (Samuel Ameh) and Dangote connived to send their boys to attack me and burn my motorcycle. A few months ago, if they saw you here with me, they would come and beat me, saying that I am a stranger in this land,” Akaji told National Record.
The Four Cs: Committee, CDA, Compensation and Corruption
A youth body in Edumoga District, Edumoga Youth Movement (EYM), began the initial resistance against the non-environmental operations of Dangote coal mining exploration that resulted in pollution when it began in 2020.
This reporter gathered that following its agitations, an ad hoc committee, consisting of nine members, was set up to assess the extent of pollution affecting the populations that depend on these rivers for their livelihood by EYM. The committee was also given the responsibility to evaluate the magnitude of damages that have been caused and proffer sustainable recommendations. Two Dangote Coal Mines representatives were also members of the committee, namely Engr Faniyi Segun and Surveyor Samuel Okonkwo, a document obtained by National Record showed.
As part of its recommendations, the committee recommended, among other things, the provision of portable water via the drilling of boreholes for all the communities that depend on the polluted rivers. The recommendation was accepted by not only Dangote Coal Mines but also by Dangote Group, the document obtained by National Record and signed by Surveyor Okonkwo in July 2020, noted.
“As at the time of this report, the affected communities do not have any other source of water for either drinking or domestic use. It is only those who have the financial muscle that have been able to overcome the challenge of getting drinking water by travelling several kilometres to Ugbokolo Town to buy sachet water popularly called pure water while those without means nor alternative continue to consume the contaminated water,” the committee report stated.
Investigations by National Record showed that Dangote failed to implement the committee’s recommendation as none of the villages has access to either borehole or any other alternative water sources. Residents, especially farmers and fishermen, whose existence are linked to the polluted rivers have not only been disoriented but their lives are in danger with the continuous dependence on the contaminated rivers.
The national president of EYM, Mr Godfrey Owotikwu, spoke to this reporter on the water predicament: “Dangote did not construct any borehole in the communities affected and members of the committee compromised by obtaining the sum of 100 thousand naira from the company monthly.”
He alleged that apart from the bribes paid to committee members, traditional rulers were also bribed, adding that following the payments, Dangote ended the prospect of providing boreholes as recommended by committee and even the signing of CDA.
National Record had previously reported that traditional chiefs are on the company’s payroll. According to that report, the sum of eighteen million naira was obtained from Dangote by second-class traditional ruler in Okpokwu LGA, Chief James Okefe, and addition to bribes paid to a former president of the EYM and other members of EYM executive.
Though community members denied the existence of a proper CDA, a copy independently obtained by National Record showed that Dangote Coal Mines Ltd is yet to fulfil its legal obligation of providing the host community the requisite benefits, even after it complied with a directive from the federal government to sign obligatory CDA.
CDAs are expected to be signed by mining companies before beginning operation. The purpose is to guarantee that mining firms develop the communities where they operate.
Corporate Social Irresponsibility
A document by Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), entitled: “Approved List of Active Pre-January 2021 Community Development Agreements” revealed the absence of Dangote CDA with host communities.
National Record obtained a copy of CDA that Dangote Coal Mines Limited and Effeche-Akpali signed on 12th March, 2020 showing the failure of Dangote to actualise its obligation. Articles 1 to 6 of the agreement noted that Dangote should provide potable water, health care centres/clinics, vocational training centres, scholarships, micro-credit schemes, monthly lump sum and yearly compensation to affected farmers, electricity, allied infrastructure like roads and employment opportunities for community members.
But of all the obligations in the CDA, Dangote Coal Mines only provided three: a scholarship worth 1 million naira annually shared among 10 members of the host communities, a borehole that is no more functional, and electricity for the communities. This breach constitutes a violation of the Nigerian Minerals and Mining Act (NMMA) 2007 and the Nigerian Minerals and Mining Regulation (NMMR) 2011.
Investigation by this reporter showed that DIL also failed to fulfil its expressed concerns for the host communities on CDA regarding payment of compensation to affected land owners and farmers, pollution prevention and preservation of the ecosystem, employment of community members and provision through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
National Record could not provide further information because page 6 of the CDA between Effeche-Akpali and Dangote Industries Limited was missing. A reliable source at the company confided in National Record that the missing page 6 was deliberately removed by Dangote because it contained information that will further indict the management of the company with regard to beneficiaries that have been short-changed.
National Record could not obtain any copy of the CDA with Abache. Multiple searches on Dangote Group website was fruitless as the company revealed no information on any CSR carried out in Effeche-Akpali and other host communities. The only infrastructure in the community visited by this reporter are unfunctional boreholes in Abache and Effeche.
Contrary to this reality, this reporter noted two media reports stating that the company had completed several projects as contained in the CDA. In one of the reports, it was stated: “The CDA signed by the company and host communities had helped accelerate the provision of infrastructural development around the host communities.” This statement does not reflect National Record’s findings and interviews across the company’s coal mining host communities.
Traditional rulers on payroll, statutory violations
Speaking on the CDA between Dangote Coal Mines and Effeche-Akpali to National Record, the village head, Samuel Ameh, affirmed that the community benefitted in terms of scholarships and electrification. He however could not provide a copy of the CDA.
“I cannot provide you a copy of the CDA and members who benefitted from the scholarship,” he said, stating that the company built “blocks of classrooms”. Mr Ameh also confirmed that traditional chiefs are being paid monthly stipends.
“They pay me 70 thousand naira monthly but we have stopped it since June. They brought a paper for us to sign but they backdated the agreement to 2020 which is not supposed to be. I have received 70 thousand naira every month since their commencement, community chairmen and heads are paid between 20 thousand and 30 thousand naira,” Mr Ameh also revealed.
Ameh also revealed that Dangote and Effeche Community are at log-heads. According to him, the inquiry around whether the company actually carried out its claimed Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) and CDA made the community to halt the company’s mining activities in Effeche.
This revelation by Mr Ameh brought to limelight an allegation that Dangote Coal Mines Ltd lacks an approved ESIA in contravention of section 15 of the NMMR (2011), which clearly stressed the importance of an approved ESIA before the commencement of mining operation.
Sources in the Federal Ministry of Environment, who pleaded anonymity, had independently disclosed to National Record that the activities of Dangote Coal Mines in Benue lack approved ESIA. According to one of the sources, the ESIA document presented by the company is not authentic as no ESIA was carried in the first place, let alone approved by the Federal Ministry of Environment.
Assassination and communal clashes
The commencement of mining triggered and engendered waves of displacements, mutual suspicion and disunity leading to not only entrenched acrimony, but even alleged assassination and violent eruptions of intra-communal violence since the mining began.
Findings revealed that when farmlands began to vanish through strip mining, the natives, who are predominantly farmers, were forced to relocate from their native land either as a result of mining or due to crisis fuelled by compensation and squabbles over ownership of land.
Findings by National Record indicate that Effeche and Abache villages become hotbeds of communal squabbles, violence and generalised insecurity. Violence reared its head early when atrocious quarrels over compensation erupted in the host communities which had before then lived together peacefully. National Record gathered that these conflicts ultimately led to the alleged assassination of a prominent native of Abache, Mr Joseph Onuh, a lecturer in the Department of Maths/Statistics, School of Technology, Benue State Polytechnic.
Mr Onuh was alleged to have been ambushed and brutally beaten to a pulp, and abandoned on the road. He was later confirmed dead at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, Enugu, to where he was rushed.
His violent death, for whom nobody had been brought to justice, though some suspects were initially said to have been arrested, was followed by series of unrests in not only his immediate community of Abache but even more so in the entire Effa clan as a result of compensation. Due to the alleged vicious and crosscutting personal interests between and amongst natives, witch-hunting and assassination plots and other diabolical machinations allegedly became the norm.
Recalling his encounter at the hands of indigenes of another clan aggrieved with his unending quest to secure compensation and environmental justice for members of his Ai’Akaji family, Mr Fedoje Oguche, a native of Effeche, alleged that Samuel Ameh has been witch-hunting him and made several attempts to murder him because of his dogged pursuit of justice, accountability and fairness on the issue of compensation.
He narrated his recent ordeal and how he escaped through an inch when members who he mentioned were allegedly sent by Mr Samuel Ameh tried to abduct him. Although he said that he escaped unbruised, he lost his phone in the sordid incident. Multiple interviews in Effeche confirmed that Mr Ameh actually attempted and still making efforts to evict some natives of Effeche.
Reacting to National Record’senquiries, Mr Ameh claimed that the occupied estate and farmlands by Effeche Community belong to his primogenitor. “My great-grandfather gave them the land to farm and I can evict them and collect back the land,” he said while denying the existence of any legal documents to support his claims.
Dangote Coal Mine Ltd or Dangote Industries Ltd?
Although vast land has been stripped its vegetation and gouged deep down by excavators strewn everywhere, and heavy-duty trucks coming and going with loads of coal from the mining sites, but National Record findings indicate a degree of uncertainty on the corporate entity that really ought to be doing the exploration?
It is a statutory requirement that any company in the solid mineral industry that intends to mine must obtain and acquire requisite certifications and licenses. These cut across relevant ministries, agencies, departments and parastatals of the federal government. Among these is the Mining Cadastre Office (MCO), an agency responsible for approving mining leases.
MCO granted Dangote Industries Ltd (DIL) approval to mine coal in Olamaboro LGA in Kogi State on Thursday, February 21, 2019. However, the approval, overtime, seems to have shifted to Okpokwu LGA of Benue State. This finding indicates that DIL or Dangote Coal Mines Ltd lacked the exclusive right to mine coal in Benue communities, especially where it doing so now in Effeche-Akpali and Abache.
The letter signed by A. H. Damagum, on behalf of the Director General of MCO, revealed that the mining lease number is 28855ML and the number of cadastral units is 225. Although the geographical coordinate provided on the document showed a different location which is Olamaboro LGA of Kogi State, a list of companies published on December 31, 2023 by MCO showed that DIL possessed a valid mineral title to mine coal and clay in Benue State.
To further ascertain the legality of the right company, National Record checked the open portal of the Ministry of Solid Minerals Development’s Integrated Automation and Interactive Solid Minerals Portal (IAISMP) to ascertain if either Dangote Coal Mines or DIL are duly licensed by the ministry.
Multiple searches by National Record on the portal showed that Dangote Coal Mines Ltd does not exist on the ministry’s website. This means that it has never been licensed to extract coal. Searches on the portal only showed that ‘Dangote Industries Limited’ exist in nine areas in Kogi and Ogun states.
National Record found that Dangote Cement Company Plc is the only legally-backed company among its subsidiaries with an active mining lease in Benue State. The company is leased for limestone in Gboko LGA.
The swindle using Ghana mining law to defraud land owners
Though the mining of natural resources and solid minerals remains the exclusive right of the Federal Government of Nigeria, the 1999 Constitution, the Land Use Act of 1978, and the Public Lands Acquisition Laws of concerned states specify the procedures that a state must oversea preparatory plans and define and implement measures to compensate the affected people.
The compensation of affected farmers was carried out by the Benue State Ministry of Land and Solid Minerals and was expected to be in accordance with the regulatory provisions of Nigeria and Benue State. But a Certified True Copy (CTC) of the list of compensation claimants, entitled: “Computation Report Sheets Volume 3 for Odoba and Effeche Villages in Ogadigbo and Okpokwu Local Government Areas,” showed otherwise.
The document, approved by State Land Deed Registrar, Emmanuel Chir, showed that valuation was conducted deploying the Republic of Ghana Minerals and Mining (Compensation and Resettlement) Regulations, 2012 (L.I 2175) to swindle and deprive affected property owners who are predominantly farmers and unknowledgeable of their benefits. This contradicts the provisions of the Land Use Act 1978 in line with NMMR and NMMA. It revealed that the sizes of their farmlands and geolocation were not recorded while affected farmers are missing from the list.
A letter submitted to the Benue State Ministry of Land and Survey, Makurdi on Monday, April 15, 2024 by the members of the Ai’Akaji family alleged that names of indigenous farmers and inhabitants were removed and replaced with non-members of the community. The family stressed that missing volumes of the compensation list was made inaccessible because of the level of corruption in the compensation of indigenous farmers.
The letter reads in part: “Finding from certified true copy of Dangote Coal Mines limited, volume 3 of the compensation list and related document attached to CTC request released to us by Ministry of Lands, Survey and Solid Minerals, Makurdi on 12th April, 2022 and 13th September 2022 respectively, indicated 28 members of Al’Akaji Ebbeh Family as lands owner (individual’s lands owners). [sic]
“However, many names of our family members and members of Eheche (Effeche) Olaiakaji community who are land owners are missing on the volumes 3 compensation list obtained by us. It is possible that some of the missing names of land owners can be find [sic] in volume 1 and volume 2 of the compensation list which ministry of lands, survey and solid minerals.” [sic]
Human, social, economic and other rights’ violations
Investigation by National Record showed that the corruption in the entire compensation process and disparities of payment have made the conditions and circumstances of affected farmers dire since the company ejected them from their ancestral land without paying compensation for all damages done to them, including alleged violation of their human, social, economic and environmental rights especially non-provision of alternative land as demanded by law.
Findings also showed that 30% of each affected farmers’ compensation was deducted by Dangote Coal Mines Limited from the compensation sum without the prior knowledge and approval of Effeche members.
Oguche Fedoje of Al’Akaji family believes that the reduction of their compensation was intentional, that it was a reward to unaffected members of other communities who connived and cooperated with Dangote Coal Mines Limited, the state ministry and traditional rulers.
When National Record contacted Benue State’s erstwhile Head of Enumeration and Valuations, Ministry of Land and Survey, Mr Agaba Opita Peter, confirmed that they were commissioned to carry out evaluation by Dangote Industries Limited and denied ever hoarding the accessibility of public information regarding the enumeration.
“I retired from service since 15th December 2022. We were commissioned by Dangote Industries Limited and I suppose that all information is available with Dangote Industry Limited at their office at Ankpa,” Agaba said.
Speaking on the trend of corruption in the compensation and enumeration process, a director in the Benue State Ministry of Solid Mineral, Mr Anselm Nege, noted that his ministry would investigate the situation, adding that the state has suspended all mining activities. “We know we issued the deed; we shall investigate and the state government would be happy for your support,” he said. Subsequent calls to Nege were neither picked nor replied.
This showed the failure of both the Benue State Ministry of Land and Environment in discharging their regulatory oversight based on the national standard and global best practices. An instance is how the Benue State Ministry of Environment nose-dived in its responsibility to ensure the implementation of ecological action and management plan.
Other violations
That is not all, the investigation by National Record clearly revealed a number of statutory violations by DIL or Dangote Coal Mines Ltd, as the case may be – in areas of pollution, licensing, ESIA procedures, CDAs, CSR, among others. This is contrary to its avowed commitment to conducting operations with utmost concern for health, safety, security and environment (HSSE).
DIL says its CSR and HSSE are seen as drivers of environmental protection, but this investigation, and indeed previous reports, show the opposite. “We give utmost regard to safety, security of persons, preservation of operating environment and peaceful coexistence with host communities and the public,” it stressed in its ESIA document.
Ironically, the situation in these communities is that of a farmer with a barn full of yams but is still throbbed by hunger.
Mum and denials
To ascertain clarity on the alleged infractions such as environmentally-threatening activities and pollution of rivers, compensation issues, corruption and internal disharmony in the host communities, National Record reached out to the General Manager, Special Duties, Dangote Mines Limited, Mr Nuhu Elujah, in September 2024 for the company’s perspective.
When contacted and asked, Mr Elujah declined to speak on the findings by National Record but instead directed that the information should be sent to Lagos.
Several messages forwarded to the company by this reporter was not responded to. These findings were sent to the official electronic mail addresses provided to public on the Mine Cadastral Office and the ESIA document.
At the time of filling this report none of the messages had been responded to. Similarly, a message sent to the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA) on Friday, November 1 has not been replied as at press time.
Concluded.
This investigation is supported By the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) with funding support from the MacArthur Foundation.
