n this report, Jennifer Ugwa writes about illegal importation of damaged and obsolete cooling appliances into the Nigerian electronics market and its impact on environment and health.

Fourteen months after Juliet Moses bought a secondhand refrigerator from Alaba International in Lagos, the biggest electrical and electronic market in West Africa, she returns for another one. Her previous purchase is clearly malfunctioning.

“I woke up one day only to realise that the food I had stored in the freezer had gone bad,” says Moses, a housekeeper. “Only the top half of the refrigerator was working, and the freezer wasn’t working.”

Moses had bought the refrigerator for N60,000 ($154.63), a price higher than a new one of similar size at the time. She is convinced that a secondhand refrigerator from America and Europe is more durable than new but substandard products sold in Nigeria, mainly from China.

But purchasing a reliable secondhand product in the market is a gamble. “We buy untested from suppliers in Europe. So we sell untested to make a profit,” says Chijioke Igbokwe whose shop Moses has come to buy another refrigerator.

In his shop at Fridge Line in Alaba International, arrays of imported second-hand electronics like refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines and cookware are on display. For a moment, he haggles over a double-door Samsung refrigerator with a customer and eventually settles for N120,000 ($644.33).

Last September, Igbokwe received a 40-foot container with nearly 200 pieces of used electronics from Europe and within a few months, he had sold most of the appliances. He says he spent about N4 million ($10,309.28) on shipment to Lagos port, adding that he spent additional N5 million ($12,886.6) to clear the goods from the port.

The importation of electrical, electronic equipment or used EEE is not prohibited in Nigeria. In 2019, the country’s imports of EEE amounted to about US$3.72 billion, according to the United Nations import and export database, COMTRADE.

But importing end of life (EoL) and damaged equipment, known as electronic waste or e-waste, is illegal. Under section 67(1) of the National Environmental Regulations, the offence is punishable with a fine of N5,000,000 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding ​​two years or both.

The Basel Convention treaty which Nigeria has signed discourages e-waste trade because of toxic materials and heavy metals in used electronics that are harmful to health and the environment.

Almost three decades after the treaty’s ratification and national regulation, approximately 15,700 tonnes of damaged EEE enter the country annually, according to a United Nations funded report.

The report found that over 2,300 tonnes of damaged refrigerators and 1,500 tonnes of air conditioners were shipped into Nigeria from high-income countries in Europe, Asia and America illicitly.

In the past decade, despite national and global conversations about the danger of dumping e-waste in low-income countries, lax regulation and enforcement have made Nigeria an attractive destination for toxic e-waste.

READ MORE HERE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/how-toxic-e-waste-from-high-income-countries-booms-in-nigerian-market/

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