Open Letter To The Honorable Minister For Environment On Federal Ministry Of His Officials Demanding EIA Report On Warri Restaurants: I Suspect Desperation To Extort

I write to demand thorough investigations into a letter written by the federal ministry to a restaurant in Warri, Delta state private property, Tonia’s Place, in the shape of a demand notice, asking for proof of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) bearing all sorts of technical certifications ahead of a scheduled visit.

The tone of the said letter has got me wondering what the Federal Ministry of Environment has got to do with visiting small businesses, like a restaurant on private property in the guise of enforcing the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Act and sundry regulations.

This question has been agitating my mind since receipt of the purported letters on letterhead of the Federal Ministry of Environment, demanding an April 5th facility visit to the small restaurant; that just opened on a private property on Airport Road, Warri.

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In the said letter signed by one A.O. Oritsemeyiwa, Acting for the Controller, Delta State, the ministry stated that during the visit, the property or facility owner, is expected to present to the team, a catalogue of documents/reports approvals including

√ Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)
√ Environmental Audit Reports (EAUR)
√ Environmental compliance Monitoring Reports (ECMR)
√ Environmental Evaluation Report (EER)
√ Post-Impact Assessment Report (PIA)
√ Air Quality Result AQR)
√ Water Analysis Report (WAR) and;
√ Environmental Management Plan (EMP)

The said Oritsemeyiwa concluded by expecting the owner of *Tonia’s Place* “to give them (EIA team) the necessary assistance they may require in achieving their statutory Responsibility.”

In the many years, I have been a mainstream stakeholder in EIA gatherings, I have never heard where the Federal Ministry of Environment will reduce its regulatory duties to conducting EIAs for restaurants or petty shops.

I am yet to find in the EIA Act and its annexes where a roadside eatery on private property can catch the regulatory attention of the federal ministry of environment for that matter. Usually, the Federal Ministry of Environment regulates EIAs on critical, major projects involving oil operations, high tension electricity cable projects, major roads or sundry key projects with critical impacts on stakeholders in the environment, the project is being sited.

If not a display of desperation to extort on target victims, which law permits the Federal Ministry of Environment to demean itself too low to the point of inspecting boreholes, septic tanks, plates, air quality and whatever, in a small eatery?

If the Federal Ministry of Environment is checking restaurant toilets and kitchens, what is left for the Local Governments Health & Environmental Sanitation Departments to regulate or check.

I am consciously suspicious of the letter from the said Oritsemeyiwa, purportedly acting on behalf of the State Coordinator of the Federal Ministry of Environment.

I implore the Minister in charge and management of the Ministry’s head office to validate the letter and motive.

Two contact numbers given in the said letter might be of help in the ministry’s investigation. They include 08034373874 or 08034730818.

While I am not afraid to resist this seeming desperation for extortion with all legal means possible, my greater concern for raising this open letter is to guide against the implication for the larger society.

Our society, incontrovertibly due to systemic governance failure, is gliding towards a failed state. The government, at all tiers, is increasingly failing to meet its core duty of protecting lives and property.

Inflation is on a steady spiral, basic ingredients to ease lives for the masses are lacking. No light, fuel gliding out of reach of the common man. Citizens have to provide everything, security, water, light, and what have you for selves. Businesses are closing down rapidly because the cost of sustaining investments is shooting higher and unbearable every day.

Under the circumstance, it beats my imagination that the same failed government and its agencies and departments are increasing making unreasonable demands to extort business, especially SMEs that can barely stay afloat to pay the salaries of engaged hands.

Rather than encourage the few determined investors with incentives to carry on and reduce the increasing rate of unemployment, why would the Federal Ministry of Environment compound the problem by usurping the role of state or local government councils by demanding to inspect toilets, boreholes and waste bins of a roadside restaurant?

How does it encourage investors? For how long will the government continue to say one thing, like calling for foreign investments and by their action shutting down existing investments with all manner of demands and extortion on businesses?

I hope a thorough investigation of this suspicious letter will provide meaningful answers to the emanating puzzles being thrown up.
Regards

Zik Gbemre
March 31, 2022