By LAIDE AKINBOADE

The Federal Government has inaugurated an inter-ministerial steering committee for the management of polychlorinated byphenyl, PCBs, in Nigeria.

Minister of Environment, Mrs. Hadiza Ibrahim Mailafia, who was represented by Dr. Mrs. Uju Okoye, a deputy director in the Ministry said that the PCBs are a class of organic compounds found to be fire resistant, stable, non-conductive to electricity and has a low volatility under normal conditions. These characteristics have made them ideal for industrial application and consumer products.

According to her, “The country has never been known to produce PCBs; however the country has imported between 1940s and early 1980s a good deal of PCB- containing equipment such as transformers, capacitors and ballasts, as well as additives and hydraulic fluid additives. The power holding company of Nigeria, PHCN, has been adjudged the largest Nigerian consumer of dielectric fluids and owns a large number of equipment that contains PCBs.

Due to toxicity characteristics and classification of PCBs as persistent organic pollutants POPs, their production was banned globally in early 1980s. They are one of the 21 classes of POPs targeted for elimination by the 2001 Stockholm Convention on POP due to their potential damage to human health and environment.”

She stressed that, “ Nigeria stands by Stockholm Convention to eliminate the use of PCB- containing equipment by 2025 and will make determined efforts to enthrone liquid PCBs, and equipment contaminated with PCBs will be subjected to environmentally sound waste management not later than 2028.

The financial support from the World Bank’s executed Canadian POP’s Trust Fund carried out PCB inventory in the electric power generating, transmitting and distributing facilities spread across 10 states of the federation.”

She said that the project captured 10 percent of potentially contaminated electrical equipment in the power sector; the total amount of PCB- contaminated waste was estimated to be 3,400 tons. As a follow up, the Canadian Trust fund on POP financed another study in 2009 called the ‘Location and Assessment of the status of PCB-contaminated equipment in all power holding company of Nigeria facilities. It reveals that an estimated conservation amount of 421tons PCB oil and 1,061 tons of PCB contaminated equipment found.