The need for an environmental audit

Nigeria, being a signatory to many international treaties on environment, has also established agencies under the ministry of environment to regulate the use and management of environment.However, the issues of pollution, gas flaring, indiscriminate waste dumps, erosion, flooding amongst others, have continued to top the agenda of environmental regulatory bodies and made activities that will […]

Nigeria, being a signatory to many international treaties on environment, has also established agencies under the ministry of environment to regulate the use and management of environment.
However, the issues of pollution, gas flaring, indiscriminate waste dumps, erosion, flooding amongst others, have continued to top the agenda of environmental regulatory bodies and made activities that will help to mitigate their impacts become important.
One area that has been down played is that of environmental audit which was supposed to cover projects undertaken in the country and facilities, such projects could be construction of roads, dams, factories, quarries, others  
According to the environmental protection audit Act 1970, an environmental audit assesses the nature and extent of harm or risk of harm to the environment posed by an industrial process or activity, waste, substance or noise. It is about understanding the type of contamination or pollution and the harm it poses.
Planning authorities, government agencies and private businesses use the environmental audit system to determine the condition of a site and its suitability for use, or to advise on what is required to make a site suitable for use.
The auditing process must clearly identify the environmental quality of a site, and any detriment to using that site.
Environmental audit must deliver authoritative, independent and transparent advice and recommend measures to reduce identified risks to the environment from a site or industrial facility, the issue of how many industries are complying by auditing their firm every three years.
Recently Mr. Nnimmo Bassey, a former Director, Environmental Rights Action, ERA, and Times Magazine Hero of the Environment 2009, said in a report that Nigeria needed urgent environmental audit and a master plan to detoxify it considering the high level of pollution in the country.
 “We have to urgently launch an environmental audit to find out the state of the Nigerian environment,” Mr. Bassey said.
According to Bassey, we need to know the contaminants and the things that are happening that should not happen.
Bassey said: “We have an environment in which people who drink water and eat crops in some places are doing so at their own risk and that accounts for why life expectancy is so low in the Niger Delta.
“Apart from the oil pollution and the gas flaring which are deadly, we have issues of fresh water being contaminated due to canalisation in which ocean water enters streams and other fresh water bodies. In the North, desertification is increasing, leading to the displacement of herdsmen and other citizens and that is also brining about conflicts with sedentary farmers in the Middle-Belt.
“We have a situation where a place like Lake Chad which was a very significant body in Northern Nigeria is almost gone.”
He called for an urgent clean up in some parts of the country such as Ogoni, Bayelsa, Jos and Kano based on an existing audit report carried out by the United National Environmental Programme, UNEP.
Mr. Atsegwasi Godwin, Deputy Director Land Resources and Watershed Monitoring Division of Environmental Quality Control, NESREA, said environmental auditing was necessary to achieve environmental sustainability.
He said before the inception of NESREA the compliance level of auditing in the country was zero, likewise Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), expressing happiness that “after three years you got your EIA certificate, the firm has to be audited environmentally by accredited consultants approved of by NESREA.”
Speaking on the role of NESREA in enforcing the law, he said: “We have stakeholders meetings where we invite people from different sectors to sensitise them, we have built up a robust knowledge of the environment among all sectors and the result of that is that the level of compliance is rising and it is increasing not only on auditing but side by side with EIA. The level of compliance is rising gradually but a lot needs to be done.
“With the coming up of NESREA people are very much aware, we enforce the provision of the act and provisions of the regulations by applying some measures, sometimes we seal the company that defaulted  after sending them non compliance notification letters and  warning letter.”
Godwin said Nigeria was not sitting on time bomb, observing that its pollution level cannot be compared with the “likes of Japan or United States because we are not as industrialised but more of a consuming nation.”
He added that NESREA has done a lot to curb pollution at all levels, with about 28 regulations being enforced in diverse areas to check the environment.
He added: “With NESREA regulating the use of the environment, I don’t see us sitting on a time bomb, but we know that environmentally there is a lot to be done and the whole concept of sustainability is new in the world.”
He said the low level of compliance was as a result of people resistance to change, adding: “People have been doing things without factoring the issues about environment, now there is a lot that came up and an agency came up and say don’t do it this way, don’t pollute this water because that stream, some people are drinking that water or you are mining without laws, start wearing personal protective gloves for your own safety.
“Though the level of compliance is rising, we will say it is still a challenge, we are not there yet but we are moving, and we will get there.”