Daily Independent Online.
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Wednesday, July 07, 2004.
Lagos threatens to shut NB, Dangote
By Sunny Igboanugo
Metro
Editor
Unless the Nigerian
Breweries Plc. puts its acts together towards better management of wastes from
its plant in Lagos State, the facility would be closed down before the end of
this year.
The General Manager
of the Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency (LASEPA), Mr. Debisi
Adesina, gave the ultimatum on Tuesday while briefing reporters at the Alausa
office of the agency.
He said the state
had been patient enough with the company over its indiscriminate abuse of the
environment from the Iganmu plant, which had posed a lot of hazards for the
people of the state.
Dangote Group, a
top trading company, with its headquarters in Lagos, may also be axed by the
government for the same reason, according to Adesina in his vow to clean up the
state during his tenure as the agency’s chief executive.
The agency,
according to him, had been building up cases on the companies, which were enough
to slam the hammer on them.
Piqued by the
attitude of the brewery giant to the moves of the state government to get them
stem the tide of environmental degradation, Adesina said he had obtained
“full powers” to carry out the action if nothing was done before
the end of the year.
He complained that
on most occasions, the agency’s staff on a visit to the company had been
rebuffed and prevented from entering the company, while different
correspondence had been ignored, adding that the company had, however,
continued to discharge its effluents into public waters.
“One of them
came here to say that they have no choice but to continue to throw their wastes
into the water. I am telling you the truth today, note today. If they
don’t do things the way we want them to, before the end of this year, I
will shut them down. I have that authority. This brewery took off from here.
Whatever they are today, Lagos State made them,” he said, adding that the
company was free to move elsewhere if they did not like the standards set for
them.
He regretted a
situation where the company would openly boast of making N100 billion in profit
in a year without giving anything back to the environment.
He was not however
explicit on the nature of pollution of the Dangote group, but said the agency
would soon call on the company with similar punishment.
Adesina debunked
the allegation that the agency was after money in its present move to
streamline the operation of consultants for the preparation of Environmental
Impact Assessments (EIAs) for companies in the state, adding that the situation
was brought about by the shoddy jobs they did in the past.
Vowing that there
was no going back on the new policy, which had been vehemently opposed by most
of the consultants, he said the agency would hold a meeting with them next week
to iron out sore points and to press upon them the need to comply.
