Encouraged by the success of its particulate mapping campaign in Rivers State, the Media Awareness and Justice Initiative (MAJI) has started engaging Lagos communities around extractives on particulate mapping.
The initiative is a community driven air-quality mapping and data advocacy project aimed at identifying and documenting the ecological impacts caused by fossil fuel extraction and refining in Nigeria, by measuring air emissions around oil and gas facilities.
At an interactive engagement with residents of Ibeju-Lekki on Wednesday, March 20, 2024, MAJI Executive director, Onyekachi Okoro, said that the huge environmental impacts attached to fossil fuel extraction and refining makes it imperative for communities hosting extractive industries to collect their own environmental data.
Okoro explained that impacted communities will only be able to hold the extractive firms to account when they have hard evidence, citing the Ogoni communities’ defeat of Shell as example of the use of evidence to challenge impunity.
Using low-costs air quality monitors deployed in communities around the Dangote Refinery, the MAJI will collect real-time data for the development of an environmental analysis and audit platform, to drive evidence-based discussions, build local actor capacity, and raise awareness.
The project looks to mainstream the use of open-source technology, data and participatory strategies that strengthen community and stakeholder awareness, engagement and advocacy on the environmental impacts of the potential Dangote Refinery emissions on community lives and livelihoods.
The engagement in the Lagos communities also had civil society groups such as Earthcare Foundation, Peace and Development Project (PEDEP), and Renevlyn Development Initiative (RDI) in attendance.
