Africa has long become a dumping ground not only for hazardous waste, obsolete electronics and polluting technologies, but also for international corporations and business practices that would struggle to survive under stricter regulatory systems.
Companies facing serious questions over pollution, emissions, labour practices, community rights or corporate governance elsewhere are frequently welcomed into African countries with little visible scrutiny. Once they arrive with promises of billions of dollars in investment, jobs and economic growth, difficult questions about their records are treated as obstacles to development.
Nigerian Government officials celebrate proposed investments, sign memoranda of understanding and issue licences. Yet communities are rarely given complete information about the environmental and social consequences. Environmental impact assessments may be inaccessible, inadequately scrutinised or conducted after critical political decisions have effectively been made.
We must ask: What does Nigeria investigate before welcoming a major foreign corporation? Who examines the company’s litigation, environmental and human-rights records? Who independently verifies its claims? What safeguards protect workers and host communities? Who bears the cost if the project contaminates water, destroys livelihoods or causes serious illness? Most importantly, who benefits and who carries the risk?
Investment without accountability is exploitation. Like never before, Nigeria needs investment. It needs industries, infrastructure, employment, technology and access to international markets. But development cannot mean accepting practices that other countries have rejected because they endanger human life.
Investment is not a favour granted to Nigeria. Companies invest because they expect to make profits from Nigeria’s natural resources, markets, labour and population. Nigeria therefore has both the right and the responsibility to establish the conditions under which those profits may be earned.
A corporation should not be allowed to escape environmental responsibilities in one jurisdiction and reinvent itself as a development partner in another. If it faces credible allegations, penalties or lawsuits concerning emissions, pollution, labour violations, land acquisition or human-rights abuses elsewhere, those matters must form part of Nigeria’s approval process.
Allegations do not automatically establish guilt, and a lawsuit alone should not disqualify a company. But a corporation’s complete environmental, social and legal history must be disclosed and independently examined. Nigeria should not discover a company’s record only after licences have been issued and communities have surrendered their land. Capital must not be permitted to purchase regulatory silence.
Nigeria is not without an environmental governance framework. The Environmental Impact Assessment Act requires the environmental consequences of major projects to be considered before approval. The 2021 Environmental Impact Assessment Procedures and Charges Regulations provide for project screening, risk categorisation, scoping, public participation, review, certification, monitoring and environmental auditing.
The Federal Ministry of Environment’s Environmental Assessment Department is responsible for ensuring that development projects comply with environmental laws and regulations. The National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency has also published numerous regulations covering pollution, waste, chemicals and environmental standards. The central question is therefore not whether procedures exist. It is whether they are applied independently, transparently and consistently, especially when influential politicians, foreign governments and powerful investors are involved.
An environmental impact assessment must not become a document produced to justify a decision that government has already taken. It must be an independent decision-making instrument capable of modifying, suspending or stopping a dangerous project. It must also be available and accessible to the General Public.
If consultants are selected and paid entirely by project promoters, regulators lack adequate technical capacity, affected communities and civil society cannot examine reports, and political officials have already publicly endorsed the investment, the integrity of the assessment becomes questionable. An ESIA certificate is not proof of safety if the process that produced it is closed up and cannot withstand public scrutiny.
Nigeria does not need to imagine the consequences of weak environmental regulation. The Niger Delta provides decades of evidence. Oil-producing communities have endured spills, contaminated water, damaged farmland, declining fisheries, gas flaring and serious health and livelihood consequences. While petroleum companies, contractors, political intermediaries and government institutions have benefited from extraction, many host communities have inherited pollution and poverty.
The same pattern appears in industrial settlements across the country. Communities around factories frequently complain about untreated effluent, smoke, offensive odours, contaminated waterways and unexplained illnesses. In industrial areas of Ogun State, including communities around Ota and other manufacturing corridors, residents have repeatedly raised concerns about the effects of industrial pollution on their health and environment.
Too often, regulatory action becomes visible only after public protests, media investigations or deaths. Even then, sanctions are mostly temporary, victims may receive no meaningful remedy, and factories most often resume operations without transparent evidence that the danger has been removed. This is not development. It is the transfer of corporate costs to poor communities. A company earns the profit, while residents pay through illness, lost farmland, unsafe water and shortened lives.
The dumping-ground problem is especially visible in the trade in used electronics.
UN Environment reported that more than 60,000 tonnes of used electrical and electronic equipment were shipped into Nigeria annually through Lagos ports, with additional quantities entering by land. More than one-quarter of some shipments was reportedly non-functional and effectively became waste upon arrival. Nigeria itself generated approximately 290,000 tonnes of electronic waste in 2017, while about half a million tonnes of discarded appliances were being processed annually.
Much of this waste is dismantled informally by workers including young people without proper protective equipment. Plastics and cables are burned to recover metals, releasing dangerous substances into the air, soil and water. Workers and nearby communities may be exposed to lead, mercury, cadmium, dioxins and other toxic materials.
What some exporting countries describe as “second-hand goods” may therefore amount to the export of environmental and health risks to Nigeria.
The Bamako Convention was created precisely because African countries recognised this danger. It prohibits the importation into Africa of hazardous waste, including radioactive waste, and requires environmentally sound waste management. Yet treaties and regulations are meaningless when waste is falsely declared, inspections are compromised, ports are porous and enforcement can be negotiated, with corruption most likely fueling the misdeeds from corporations to government officials.
Nigeria also generates more than 2.5 million tonnes of plastic waste annually, with over 70 per cent reportedly ending up in landfills, waterways or the wider environment. This demonstrates that the country is already struggling with its domestically generated waste and cannot afford to become a destination for additional foreign waste, yet lots of plastic promoting companies are not implementing Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) in Nigeria due to poor enforcement from weak political support, and lack of interest.
Environmental degradation in Nigeria is inseparable from corruption. Pollution frequently begins with an official signature: a licence issued without adequate scrutiny, an assessment approved despite serious gaps, a prohibited shipment cleared at a port, an inspection report altered, or a sanction quietly withdrawn.
When officials place private gain above public safety, environmental regulations become commodities for sale. Corporations learn that political access is more valuable than compliance. Communities learn that their constitutional rights can be traded for personal benefit. This is the negative multiplier effect of corrupt leadership.
Once senior officials demonstrate that rules can be suspended for politically connected investors, regulators further down the system receive the same message. Inspectors become afraid to act or expect payment before acting. Consultants produce favourable reports. Local authorities silence community complaints. Security agencies protect company facilities while citizens protesting pollution are treated as threats.
In such a system, Nigeria becomes a dumping ground for three interconnected things: waste, corporate misconduct and official corruption.
People living in project locations are not expendable populations occupying land required for investment. They are citizens with rights. Communities must receive complete and understandable information about proposed projects before approval. Technical documents should be translated into accessible language and, where necessary, local languages. Consultations must include women, young people, persons with disabilities, farmers, fishers and groups whose livelihoods depend directly on the affected environment.
Consultation cannot mean inviting selected traditional leaders to a hotel, collecting signatures and presenting the exercise as community consent. Nor should community representatives be handpicked by companies or political authorities.
For projects involving substantial land acquisition, displacement, toxic materials or serious environmental risk, Nigeria should apply a clear standard of free, prior and informed consent. Communities must be able to obtain independent legal and scientific advice. They must also have functioning grievance mechanisms and access to courts without intimidation or prohibitive costs.
What must Nigeria do now? Nigeria can reverse this pattern, but the response must go beyond speeches and ceremonial environmental campaigns.
Responsibility must begin with the Federal Ministry of Environment, led by Minister Balarabe Abbas Lawal. Its Environmental Assessment Department, headed by Mrs R. A. Odetoro, should require every major investor to disclose its international record on pollution, emissions, litigation, workplace safety, human rights and community disputes. The department must ensure that environmental and social impact assessments are independently prepared, publicly disclosed and reviewed before approvals are granted, not after political commitments have been made.
The National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency, led by Professor Innocent Barikor, must monitor companies after approval, conduct unannounced inspections, publish violations and enforce sanctions. State ministries of environment and local governments must complement this work by monitoring conditions within host communities and responding promptly to complaints about pollution, unsafe waste disposal and public-health risks.
The Nigeria Customs Service, led by Comptroller-General Adewale Adeniyi, should work with NESREA, the Nigerian Ports Authority and port health officials to track and inspect shipments of used electronics, batteries, chemicals and other potentially hazardous materials. Importers and exporters not Nigerian taxpayers must bear the cost of returning illegal, falsely declared, or non-functional shipments.
The National Assembly should strengthen the Environmental Impact Assessment Act by providing clear rules on corporate due diligence, community consultation, environmental bonds, compulsory liability insurance, compensation and remediation. The Federal Ministry of Justice, led by the Attorney-General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, should ensure that officials who approve fraudulent assessments, conceal violations or accept bribes are prosecuted. Companies that falsify environmental information or repeatedly violate standards should face substantial fines, licence cancellation and exclusion from public contracts.
Affected communities must also have enforceable rights to information, participation, independent advice, compensation and appeal. High-risk companies should deposit environmental performance bonds before commencing operations so that funds are available for emergency response, compensation and ecological restoration. Nigeria must welcome responsible investment, but no amount of capital should purchase exemption from its environmental laws or transfer private corporate liabilities to the public.
Nigeria cannot claim to be the Giant of Africa while acting as a rubber stamp for every investor carrying a large cheque. National dignity is not expressed through slogans, motorcades or ceremonial receptions. It is demonstrated by the capacity to protect citizens, enforce standards and tell even the most powerful corporation: You must obey our laws.
We should welcome responsible investment, useful technology and genuine partnerships. But we must reject investments that depend on regulatory weakness, community dispossession, environmental destruction or political corruption.
Nigeria is not a wasteland. Nigerians are not expendable. Our rivers, forests, farmland and communities are not commodities that public officials may secretly exchange for personal enrichment.
The choice before us is clear: Nigeria can remain a destination where the world sends what it no longer wants and corporations practise what they cannot defend elsewhere, or it can build a regulatory system that places human life above political connections and corporate profit.
Nigeria must choose dignity. It must choose accountability. It must choose life.
Donald Ikenna Ofoegbu is a Nigerian – a sustainable development expert and environmental activist and campaigner.
