Before the discovery of oil Nigeria depended on non-oil mineral resources. The economy was good and the citizens were generally happy. But in the 1970s oil came to replace the other mineral resources and the consequent abandonment of the others to the detriment of Nigerians who were engaged in the various sectors utilizing natural resources. One of such negative effects of dependence on oil
was the neglect of coal mining, which dealt a
devastating blow on the Nigerian Coal Corporation
(NCC). In Enugu where coal deposits were in abundance
and served as money-spinner for the Government,
the neglect is today evident as the vast coal mine
now lies waste. Last week, Oriental News visited the coal mine
locations in the state and the mining sites have
become a ghost area with facilities of the NCC now
dilapidated. People who saw when the going was good in the
corporation who spoke to Oriental News were
bitter and full of regrets that the goose that laid the
golden eggs has been left to die, blaming the
Federal Government for the woes of NCC in Enugu. First is Mr Charles Okeke, a 78-year-old retired coal
miner, who worked in the electrical department of
the moribund Nigerian Coal Corporation, Enugu. He relived to Oriental News his experience as a coal
miner and how he enjoyed working in the mines in
Enugu. “I was more or less an electrician; in every mine, it is
the electrician that shows the way inside the mine
and we are usually fewer than other mine workers. “It is the management and Federal Government that
brought about the end to mining of coal, not that
the workers got tired, but the management started
saying they could no longer maintain the staff of
Nigerian Coal Corporation. For me at that point I
was transferred to the North where they wanted to do an extension, but on getting there, they said the
Federal Government said they should close it, that
they don’t have money and I came back, that was
between 1978 and 1979, and I came back to our
workshop in Enugu,” he said. Okeke believes that anybody who goes into the
mine and came out should be given triple ration
anywhere palm wine was shared as the person
would be regarded to have come back from the
land of the spirit. According to him, while entering the mine in the
day time, if you do not have good lighting facility,
you would not be able to see inside the mine. “There is a place we call mine entrance on going in,
you will see a stretch of electric light, that one is the
football field until you get to the phase where the
coal is. There is a place we call long wall, in there if
you say that you don’t know God that means you
will never know God again in your life. There you will see different machines and belts. There is a
place you will get to and you will see a height like in
the long wall supported with pillars for the roof. Sometimes the weight from top will break down the
supports and bend them to V-shape. You wear
only pants with your tool bag, you will wear a mine
helmet, but if the mine collapses by force, it will
smash the mine and flatten the person to the
ground. Those wages for support on top of the mine sometimes collapse and flatten the miners.
That is when you here that one died in a mine,” he
said. He narrated how coal miners in those days
suffered; saying that if they shook your hands, it
was like a dried hand of a chimpanzee or a mason’s
concrete because the miners were using pikes,
which was later modernized into detonators that
were used to blast the coals. “The surveyors will come to use chalks to mark
some spots where the coal is and you don’t go
beyond their markings. There is what we call
electric Boeing motor used with twist drill, high
carbon, to drill around by the shoot farers; they are
the ones that will fire the detonators connected with cables. It is usually dug long on the ground of
about four feet, well loaded, bring out the cables
and when it is time to shoot, he will connect it. The
roads will be blocked that nobody comes close.
Whenever you hear the whistle, you know the
detonator is about to go off. All these activities are inside the mine. The shoot-farers are the ones that
shoot the coal. They block all branches before they
fire the coal. The mine is not like this outside world.
It has corners. He will stay in a corner, mine the
battery and you will hear huge sound. “They will count the number of shots. If anyone
refused to explode, that is very dangerous, it must
explode, you can’t leave it because it may explode
at any point in time and kill any nearby person.
That place that the coals were shot down, some
people will come and pack the coals using mine car or tub. They will put the coals inside the tub and a
locomotive engine will come to drag it outside the
mine and you will see it is real coal; they will be
tipped in a hip. Wherever the coal is fired with that
detonator it is allowed to cool down before it is
packed because the fume of that detonator can cause tuberculoses. That was the work I was
supposed to do, to pack the coals, but I told them
that I cannot do that because I am the only son of
my mother,” he said. Throwing more light on how coal mining affected
life in Enugu, His Royal Highness, Igwe Tony
Ojukwu, the Igwe of Enugu urban and the
traditional ruler of Ogui Nike said: “We have been calling for the reactivation of the
coal industry because of the benefits we reaped
from that deposit when it was booming. Coal was
everything to Enugu; we never had oil except the
big tanks being brought around through the
railways when the railways were there. They later gave way to tankers and the thing flooded every place. And later there was this channelization
through the pipes to refineries, and depots and that
allowed us some leeway in terms of free traffic on
our roads. Otherwise formerly it was tankers
everywhere. “But, while coal lasted, while the excavation and
activities of the coal mine lasted the people of
Enugu enjoyed the boom because the coal industry
provided a lot of jobs. It wasn’t a matter of
academic or qualification, but by ones strength to
dig and bring out the coal to the refinery and that gave a lot of people jobs. Either you are an artisan
or a labourer; whatever you are called upon to do
you earned your living, you earned your stomach;
it was sure to feed you. “In fact, when the coal was booming, their pay day
was usually ceremonial. It was usually announced
two or three days ahead of the time; you will hear
that colliery people will take their salary. Even
people in employment used to abandon their world
to look for something to sell to collieries as they come out from their pay office. Anythingyou had in
your hands to sell will be bought; we had field days
during that period. Once it is pay day for colliery,
ah! Everybody will be going towards the Iva Valley;
if they go there they will bring out their items,
everywhere will be market. “From the roads to the lawns in the offices;
everything you had in your hands somebody will
be prizing it and somebody will buy it. And for
almost a week within the period of their pay day
everybody enjoyed; people had something to eat;
people were marrying. They were well paid and they were ready and willing to spend the money.
Some of them used to move from their pay office
through the main market at Ogbette to go and buy
a bicycle which was not an easy thing to do at that
time. “But today, we have all returned home in penury;
no available jobs and those who worked with the
Coal Corporation that time wouldn’t come back
now to start going to school in other to fit into the
system; the jet age have come. So that is what is
most regrettable and it is pinching on us and the economy in the state. We are all crying and wishing
that the hands of the clock could be wound back
so that yesterday will come and we will make some
merriment again. “It is possible to revive the coal industry here; yes
it’s very possible; nothing happened to it. You
know from the coal industry they used to bring a material that was sent to the
Nkalagu Cement factory to enhance the production
of cement. That one has also declined because there is no source again. When the coal
was there the railways were also at its peak
transporting coal to the cement industry and other
places. “The coal did not collapse, the government stopped
it and we are appealing to the Federal Government
to reconsider its stand on coal industry in Enugu.
Nothing happened to it; the dump is still there
unexcavated, untapped so if the government re-
opens it now the government can afford to use more scientific mining methods. That is what we
have been praying for because it will provide jobs,
it will boost the economy. There is no way the
government can reopen the coal industry now and
regret it or fall short of progressing. No, the
government will enjoy some boom in the economy. People will be empowered. We are talking of power
supply, in those days coal was being sent to Oji-
River power station and there was electricity. And
even now that coal has multi-merits, so this is the
time to re-activate it,” Ojukwu said. The traditional ruler expressed belief that the
government would one day remember the coal
industry because of the economic value attached to
the industry. “There was hardly any family that did not have
somebody working in the coal corporation; every
family benefitted from it. You need to see their office
any day they announced they were going to pay.
There were people who would crawl out in the
morning to get there and wait. People from distant communities around here used
to work to the place; the lucky ones had bicycles to
ride to the place. Motorcycles and cars were not
many then but still people managed to get to that
place. People will wake up at night and cook all these
delicacies and carry it to that place and be sure that
the first set of colliery staff that comes out will finish
whatever you have. They will be rushing out; that
was the position then and this is the type of
experience we want to enjoy now even in a more advanced and more technological pattern, that is
what we are yearning for; and this government has
always said it is for the people and that is why we
have been waiting and yearning for the industry to
be opened,” he said. In an attempt to put the records straight, Mr Ibe
Everest, acting Managing Director, Nigerian Coal
Corporation who was posted to Enugu 26 months
ago and on secondment from the Ministry of Mines
and Steel Development noted that the Nigerian Coal
Corporation since 2005 has been undergoing
privatization. This, he said, was necessitated by the fact that
generally government is seen to be a poor
businessman. “So, government started divesting most of its
activities….See NITEL, for instance, and a couple of
them, putting them in private hands. So, Nigerian
Coal Corporation came under one of those
government corporations that were to be divested.
More so that government became very interested, renewed interest came up that Nigeria must move
away from its mono cultural economy and diversify.
So government started putting an eye that we
could generate revenue from solid minerals and
coal was seen as one of those solid minerals that
Nigeria has high potentials and that we could best harness those potentials if private sector came in. “So in 2005 the government felt okay, let us divest,
put it in private hands coupled with the fact that in
the past, prior to this period management had been
a problem. If you can recall Nigerian Coal
Corporation before 2005 we were owed 39
months’ salary arrears. You can imagine the frustration for the workforce and how ugly the
situation was. So, what we are doing is to try to put
activities in the coal sector in private hands and this
has been going on maybe rather slowly, but we will
get there. “What appeared to have gone wrong in the coal
industry was not in isolation; that good old days
referred to was when coal actually was the main
primary source of energy. With the advent of oil
and gas it affected coal in not a very small measure
and then too Nigerian Coal Corporation was the main supplier of …Nkalagu Cement Company was
running, the railways were running on locomotive,
Oji-River was running on coal. So, all of these that
were running on coal then depended on the
Nigerian Coal Corporation so you could understand
that whatever affected any of these three will certainly affect Nigerian Coal Corporation, that’s
what happened. “At the same time there was a downturn in the
global market for coal but it’s picking up again. It’s
picking up because the world has found out that
gas and oil are not renewable source of energy and
that we must bring in other sources into the global
energy mix. Coal is picking up again and international agency for energy predicts in their
2012 report that there will be an annual growth in
the demand for coal as a primary energy resurge at
the rate of 2.4 or 2.8 per cent annually till the year
2018. So you can see what potentially holds if we
can do the right thing, put it into private hands as quickly as we can and private sector brings in their
skill and their competence into it, coal will come
back again and Enugu will be revived once again
and we will no longer talk about the good old days
we talk about the present good days. “The retired workers are getting what is their due,
pensioners are paid as at when due, maybe I am
lucky since my advent here pensions have been
coming as at when due. As I speak with you they
have been paid up till June, we are expecting July.
In fact, their pension comes as if it’s salary, maybe that good luck came with me. Their arrears are not
so much; the only thing is that there may be small
hiccups here and there because a whole lot of
financial liability was on because of the frustration
there they took whatever they got later they now found out…people who were omitted
here and there all of that we are addressing.” An anonymous retired coal worker told Oriental
News in confidence that their condition is not very
clear because according to him some of their
benefits are pending and nobody is talking about
it. “Also the issue of sales of our quarters, since it was
talked about we have not been told if they will sell
to us or not. We have been struggling for them to
hand over the buildings to us as the right people
who have been living there. However, they appear
to be more concerned with the sale of the spaces within the quarters.”

...And how they have destroyed many more others

What a government Nigeria has

jeez.op deres sometin called SUMMARY.u should try it.@ topic only in history av i heard of enugu as a coal mining state.av not seen its contribution to nigeria economyR

Same FG the SE has been supporting since 1999. Me nah want stress ina mi left breast.