Three major companies in Lagos, namely Nigerian Bottling Company, producers of Coca-Cola, Guinness, and FrieslandCampina, producers of Peak Milk have been sealed for unauthorised groundwater extraction.
The Lagos State Water Regulatory Commission (LASWARCO) carried out the enforcement on Tuesday, the News Agency of Nigeria reports.
Mr Olowu Babatunde, Director of Technical Services at LASWARCO, said, “We operate a law that empowers us to regulate most of these heavy abstractors in Lagos State.
“Abstractors are individuals or entities that extract large quantities of groundwater for commercial purposes.”
He added, “These companies that we have sealed, basically three of them – Coca-Cola, FrieslandCampina and Guinness, abstract water in large quantities. And we have been engaging them over time. At least, I have been here for more than seven years now.
“We’ve been engaging these companies for more than seven years now. Some, either they do partial compliance, or some don’t comply at all. So, now that we started implementation of our regulation, we now compel them to fulfill all their regulatory demands.”
The enforcement followed a news briefing by the Commissioner for the Environment and Water Resources, Mr Tokunbo Wahab, on Monday.
He explained, “The Environmental Management Protection Law 2017 empowers LASWARCO to regulate groundwater activities and impose penalties for unauthorised abstraction.”
Wahab warned that unregulated extraction could lead to severe environmental consequences such as land subsidence and groundwater contamination.
He noted that in 2020, the government offered a 75 per cent waiver on groundwater abstraction fees to encourage compliance, but the response was poor.
According to Wahab, letters were issued to non-compliant organisations with a 72-hour ultimatum to comply, and penalties would be imposed on those who continued operations without authorisation.