By Charles Nwaoguji
Nigeria currently generates over 1.1 million of tones e-waste from the consumption of local and imported electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) that have ceased to function. This was even as the Executive Director of Base Convention Coordinating Centre for the African Region (BCCC-Africa), Prof. Percy Onianwa, warned this development may cause a lot of social health challenges if it goes on unchecked.
Prof. Onianwa, who stated this at the Person-In- Port Project closing workshop, held recently in Lagos, warned that overall, dumping e-waste was creating a toxic legacy.
“We’ve found excess heavy metals in the soil, as well as in plants and people who eat vegetables. You have grazing animals, people picking vegetables and eating them, and then the drinking water containing these toxins.” he said.
He stated that the industrialised countries generate part of their e-waste from functional equipment that consumers replace with a newer version send it through Nigeria pious border to the market.
He pointed that Nigeria is one of the main West African countries that import used EEE a lot.
In an effort to improve understanding of the quantity, quality and drivers of Nigeria’s EEE imports, and help prevent illegal exports of non-functional EEE, he said a new collaboration between the UNU Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS), the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Basel Convention Coordination Centre for Africa in Nigeria (all members of the UNU-IAS Solving the E-waste Problem (Step) Initiative) and Electronic Recyclers International, was set up to gather information and reliable data on the import of used EEE and e-waste into Nigeria.
Onianwa stated that the International Basel Convention is meant to regulate and control the movement of hazardous waste from developed to developing countries – but it has been difficult to enforce.