CSO urges Mining Companies, Operators to respect agreements with communities

The Centre for Transparency Advocacy (CTA) has called on Mining Companies and Mining Operators to keep to the agreements signed with communities where mining activities were carried out.

The group’s Programme Manager, Mr McDonald Ekemezie made the call during a Town Hall Meeting held in Mpape, Bwari Area Council.

Supreme reports that the programme was on “Community Step-Down Training on Negotiation and Understanding of Community Development Agreements (CDAs)”.

According to Ekemezie, CDA is a major element in natural resource governance especially when it has to do with communities.

He said that the aim of the meeting was to step down what CDAs were to the mining communities.

“It is stepping down of knowledge of CTAs to the communities for them to build their capacities to be able to negotiate beneficial community agreements.

“This is the second year of the implementation of the project.

“Essentially it is promoting the rights of the Original Inhabitants of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) which was Funded by McArthur Foundation through Resource Centre for Human Rights and Civic Education (CHRICED).”

The programme manager said that the group had discovered that agreements were often signed by a few people where the communities don’t even have knowledge of the signatories and don’t even have access to the agreements.

“Even when agreements are signed, the mining companies do not actually implement what is agreed.”

He further said that most mining companies and mining operators carried out operations and sign agreements that were not most times understood by the community members which left the communities devastated.

“The essence now is to make communities involved in signing CDAs that are beneficial to the communities.

“For instance, they need to know the process, they need to own the process, they need to be part of it, they need to be representative enough.

“Then the needs of the community needs to be accommodated in whatever is been signed and there has to be timeframe and they have to monitor the implementation.”

Ekemezie, however, said that the project was implemented in Mpape, Kubwa (Bwari Area Council) and Karshi(Abuja Municipal Area Council)and parts of Garki.

He said that the communities were selected through a baseline study which showed that a lot of mining activities were carried out in those areas.

A Youth Leader in Mpape, Mr Joshua Kato appreciated CTA for the training and promised to step down knowledge gained to other members of his community.

He, however, decried the challenges faced by residents of the community which included lack of water supply and standard schools.