…Asks NIMASA to stop pollution of Lagos lagoons
SAN FRANCISCO, March 19, (THEWILL) – The House of Representatives Committee on Marine Transport was on Wednesday given 60 days to conduct an investigation into allegation that the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) may not have carried out due diligence before entering into joint ventures with sub-contracting parties to carry out dredging operations in Nigerian waters.
This came as the House directed NPA to suspend further awards of contracts in this direction until the determination of theinvestigation.
The committee is also charged to investigate all monies that were disbursed in respect of channel management and capital dredging projects, alleged administrative duplications in contract execution, and quality of service rendered by the contracting firms and levels of implementation, and the levels of implementation of the existing contracts.
This resolution was taken after the adoption of a motion brought by Hon. Herman Hembe alleging that “some of supposed technical partnerslack technical abilities and technical capacities.”
While presenting the motion, Hembe alleged that: “Some of these transactions smack off incompetence, waste of tax payers’ money, sharp practices, inefficiency, technical incompetence and fraud.”
He noted that the basis of NPA entering into the joint venture agreement was to provide the needed technical support, which should translate into increased traffic and consequently increased revenue. He however, observed that NPA spends approximately $1 billion on channel management and capital dredging across the country.
He cited the case of the failed Calabar Channel Capital dredging contract “where the nation wasted over 60 million Euros equivalent ofN9.5 billion of tax payers’ money without achieving the desired result.”
Similarly, the House directed the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) to stop the continuous pollution of Lagos lagoons.
This followed the adoption of a motion moved by Hon. Lanre Mukaila Odubote, entitled: adverse effects of environmental pollution of the Epe lagoon. The House also urged NIMASA to intervene and clear the water hyacinth to ease transportation on the Epe lagoon.
“Epe lagoon supports major fishery activities in Lagos State and is also used as a transportation route for people, goods, timber logs and other services from Epe to other places in the South-west and Nigeria at large.
“Over the years, the population of Epe and other settlements along the bank of the lagoon has increased through expanding commercial activities, which has led to an abuse of the environment as modern sanitary and waste treatment facilities have not been provided in most of the settlements,” the lawmaker had told his colleagues .
He expressed concern that water bodies act as sinks for the disposal of waste from about 2,000 medium and large scale industries located in the Lagos metropolis, adding that this had arisen as a result of increasing urbanisation, industrialisation and continuous environmental pollution.
“Activities such as intensive agriculture, industrialisation and urban development have become sources of environmental contamination due to uncontrolled discharge of toxic elements on marine ecosystem. Such toxic metals accumulate in tissues of aquatic resources, thereby leading to contamination of its aquatic food chain, and thus create myriads of environmental problems (that are) associated with marine pollution.
“Proliferation of toxic metals in drinking water and surface streams has triggered serious epidemiological concerns affecting the sustainability of the environment. The water hyacinth poses a lot of danger to the Epe Lagoon waterways, especially to the local fishermen, traders and others travelling by water,” he added.
Epe lagoon is one of the four major lagoons in Lagos State. Others are the Ologe, Lekki and Lagos lagoons.
SAINT MUGAGA, ABUJA
