Granite Mining at Eluogwu Land, Amata-Ishiagu By Crush Stones Industries Ltd 1993 -2008.

Most of the granite mining activities that took place at Amata village, Ishiagu were within parcels of land belonging to a particular kindred called Umuelema. Individual and private company miners at various times operated there after reaching agreements with the members of the Umuelema family. Conversely, Eluogwu land was communally owned by the entire Amata village. Crush Stones Industries Ltd happened to be the only company that had carried out mining operations on this communal land. Conditions for granting permission to the company to operate there were clearly set out in the land-owner/Tenant lease agreements. The company made use of paid labourers and some modern mining equipment in the course of its mining operations. The company ultimately benefited from the enterprise, while the land owners apparently lost out with very little remuneration from the company for their resources tapped and pollutions suffered.

people as long as they conducted themselves within the limits of their mandates and codes of the societal laws and culture. 6 These and some other factors were attractive enough for any prospective miner, be it an individual miner, private company, or a limited liability company. So in 1993, Crush Stones Industries landed at Amata village Ishiagu to consult with the elders of the community. Prior to this time there had been foreign companies that had established at parts of ishiagu community for granite mining purposes. These were the Monier Construction company M.C.C and Crushed Rock Industries at Amokwe rocky hills. These were of great economic benefits to the communities the companies operated. These village communities included. Amokwe, Okue, Ogwor and Ngwogwo. So, the coming of the Crush Stones Industries in Amata village was indeed a welcome development. The Amata village elders and the Crush Stones management sued for co-operation and symbiotic relationship in the business. The nature and character of the relationship had to be clearly defined and spelt out in the land lease agreement between the land owners and the Crush Stones Industries 7

AN AGREEMENT BETWEEN AMATA COMMUNITY AND CRUSH STONES INDUSTRIES LTD
This memorandum of agreement for lease is made this 9 th day of November, 1993 between (1)

1)
The members of Amata Community are owners in possession of the parcel of land known as, and called " a. Under the decree, quarriable minerals of which stone is one, belong to the Federal Government to whom the Quarryer will pay royalties.
b. Any person conducting quarrying operation shall pay the owner or occupier of private land or the occupier of land held under any lease granted by the government of the federation or the subject of a right of occupancy, such sums as may be fair and reasonable compensation for any disturbances of the surface rights of such owner or occupiers. c.
The lessee shall pay compensation to the owners of any crops, economic trees, buildings or works damaged or removed or destroyed by the lessee.

d.
Reasonable compensation payable to the said community will be based on (b) and (C) above that is loss of right of farmland and loss of economic trees which compensation has been agreed upon by the parities hereto in paragraph 5 and 6 hereunder.

2)
That the lessee shall pay the lessors annual rent of the sum of (N100,000.00) one hundred thousand naira, commencing from the 9 th day of November, 1993 subject to review after every five (5) years from the date of execution hereof. 3) The lessee shall give to the lessors annual Christmas presents of one cow, 100 tubers of yam, 20 cartons of beer, 20 crates of minerals, four heads of tobacco and potash.

4)
The lessee shall pay to the lessors, the sum of N50,000.00 per annum during the currency of this agreement for existing economic crops and or plants thereon and for loss of farmland or rights to farm on the said land.

5)
The lessee shall pay to the lessor the sum of (N25,000) per annum for disturbance allowances.

6)
The lessee shall make motorable, Amata road, from Girls Secondary School, Ishiagu to lessee's quarry site at Amata, and the lessee shall carryout this undertaking after (12) twelve months from the date of commencement of production.

7)
The lessee shall employ and train three indigenes of Amata Community as technicians in its company.
This agreement was signed by the above named representatives of Amata Community and Crush Stones Industries Ltd. 10 Crush Stones would appear to be honest. It tried as much as possible to operate within the ambit of the agreement. There was no crisis whatsoever. Both parties were satisfied with the role played by each other in operating the terms of the agreement. At the end of the five year duration of the agreement, it was renewed revised in 1998. We shall therefore have a look at the revised agreement.

INDUSTRIES LTD, 1998
The 1993 agreement was revised/reviewed in 1998, after five years of the company's operation on the land. All the contents of the 1993 agreement were replicated, and new items, that is items numbers eight and nine were added 11 . Item number (8)  This agreement witnessed some substantial changes starting from item number (2) two of the first/original agreement. Item number one was unchanged in its contents 15 . The rest were revised and they are as follows:

1)
That the lessee shall pay to the lessors annual rent of the sum of five hundred thousand naira for the period of this agreement.
2 3) The lessee shall pay to lessor, the sum of N 100,000.00 per annum during the currency of this agreement for existing crops and/or plants thereon and for loss of farmland or right to farm on the land.

4)
The lessee shall pay to the lessor the sum of N750,000 per annum as disturbance allowance.

5)
The lessee shall make motorable with laterite, the road from the lessee's quarry site to Agbalasi and to Girls' Secondary School, Ishiagu in the Lessors' community.

6)
The lessee shall train (8) eight indigenes of Amata community as technicians in its company.

7)
The lessee shall award tertiary institutions scholarship for indigenes of the lessors community at N100,000.00 per annum.

8)
The Lessee shall give the Lessors 100 tons of chippings every year.

9)
The lessee shall within the period of the agreement provide 50 concrete poles for the lessors rural electrification project in two installments or 25 poles each.

10)
The lessee shall pay a Public Relations Officer to be appointed by the lessors community development union, whose responsibility it shall be to facilitate free flow of information between the parties.

11)
By way of recognition, lessee shall pay the under mentioned, allowances/stipends to the following groups in the lessors community.
i. The Executive members of the Amata Community Development ' Union, N150,000.00 per annum.
ii. Traditional Rulers/Eze and Chiefs of Amata Community N 150,000 per annum.
iii. The youths of Amata N 100,000 per annum.

12)
The fifty year tenure agreed on the first lease agreement in 1993 remains valid and subsisting from the date of that agreement. The agreement was signed by the above representatives of the Amata Community and Crush Stones Ind. Ltd.
A close look at this agreement would reveal some major weakness on the part of the lessee and lessors.
One of these weaknesses was the failure on the part of the lesses to renew the agreement in 2003 when it was P.S Arum said, "Crush Stones are good people. They don't play tricks. So we received them whenever they came for the agreement" 17 . The reaction from Mr. Arum would simply conote trust and confidence which the lessors reposed on the lessee probably as a result of the good experiences they had about the company. There is nothing wrong in the lessor reposing such confidence in lessee, but there is every need to insist on correct date. The agreement should bear 2003 and not 2004 as the date the agreement was renewed. There should be reason why the lessee could not present itself for the agreement on the right date. It should even be accompanied with apology to the lessor.
Another weakness of the agreement was on the nature of benefits the lessors demanded from lessee.
They were mainly fiscal cash, cow drinks and tobacco. These monies and presents were immediately shared by the representatives of the community. No genuine development project was ever embarked upon by the community leaders, using the money they collected from the company. So one would be right to say that the agreement was not development oriented. The company on its own never embarked on any meaningful development project in favour of the community. This was because the leaders of the community/lessors never insisted on this.
Take for instance, instead of the lessors insisting on tarring their roads, what they demanded for in the agreement was a road, covered with laterite and not even granite chippings produced by the company concerned.
Again, in the agreement, instead of the lessors asking for rural electrification of their community by the company, they were asking for mere 50 electric poles. In the case of education, the sum of (N100,000) one hundred thousand naira was mapped out for scholarship at tertiary level. But the number of candidates this amount was meant for was not mentioned. Genuine demand should investigate how many people in the community should benefit from the scholarship scheme and how much the company should pay for their tuition, boarden and other requirements of those involved. It was because of these and other lapses on the part of the agreement (which should be a guide in the lessor/lessee relationship) that Amata community Ishiagu still remained incredibly underdeveloped despite a long period of granite mining in the area.

METHOD OF OPERATION
Crush Stones Industries applied highly mechanized methods in its production process. It made use of driller machine capable of penetrating a bed-rock up to a depth of 20metres before explosion took place 18 . The commonest explosive chemical it applied was dynamite. Before it was applied, alarm was sounded for everybody to clear from the site, so as to avoid any casualty. Because the location of the site was right inside the farmstead, the storms and thundering vibrations of the explosives never affected any building 19 .
At the end of the explosion, earth-moving vehicles were used to lift lumps of granite which were loaded into tipper. The tipper dropped the lumps inside the funnel of a crushing machine, located at a different section of the site 20 . The crusher then crushed the lumps into sizes which passed through their respective outlets and finally dropped on the ground from where they were loaded into tippers that ultimately discharged them at their appropriate locations.   The few obligations in the agreement were hardly implemented by the company except under pressure.
Even the said obligations were solely and entirely for Amata village community. 25

ISHIAGU
An objective assessment of this issue should consider how the community and company leaders substantially met and satisfied the conditions as stipulated in the land lease agreement. These were supposed to be a good guide to both parties in the task of maintaining mutual relationship between them. Also relevant is how the company handled the delicate issues of environmental pollutions and hazards arising from its mining operations. Of serious importance too, was the manner the company and community leaders resolved some sensitive and delicate issues arising from the youth and women demands even when the issues were not part of the contents of the land lease agreements.

ROLES OF THE COMMUNITY (LEASER) AND COMPANY (LEASEE)
All through her period of operation at the site, the company had never raised any complaint accusing the community or its leaders of intruding, distracting or interrupting its operations. The area remained intact for the mining activities of the company. 26 The area in question, Eluogwu, had its natural beacons which served as its boundaries. No one or group of people ever dared to venture into the area either to possess or dispossess any part of the land; it was a communally owned land and any attempt by anyone or group of people to intrude, would be resisted by the entire community. 27 In other words, the community played well its roles as stipulated in the agreements.
On the part of the company, it played well its roles only as it concerned her economic interests of mining, crushing and selling her products to her customers for profits. 28 But as far as it concerned the various obligations and responsibilities it owed the community as clearly stipulated in the lease agreements, it performed below expectation. It defaulted abysmally.
As shown above, an average of 50,000 tons of sold chippings were evacuated from the Crush Stones site daily, by different haulage contractors to various destinations where they were used for road construction, building constructions, air-port projects or any other constructions projects that required use of chippings. This was quite tremendous and the accrued profits to the company would appear to be huge too, given the price of chippings per ton, over the period of its operations there. Yet despite the huge profits, there was no record of any community development project it had independently undertaken and completed in favour of Amata village or Ishuagu community either. She would not provide good roads, pipe-borne water, or bore-hole, electricity, health care services (Health center), or even a functional scholarship scheme for the community. The few obligations in the agreement were hardly implemented by the company except under pressure 29 . Even the said obligations were solely and entirely for Amata village community. For instance in the lease agreement, the company was meant to float at least a simple scholarship scheme for few students at the secondary and tertiary institutions. This was 48 almost a mirage, due to incessant failures and default by the company to meet the demands. 30 So, in the end no one could enjoy the full sponsorship of the company to conclude his or her academic career. This was largely due to the lapses on the part of the company to meet its obligations to the community. 31 On the issue of paying compensation to the community du to environmental pollutions, occasional by its operations, the company was also found seriously wanting. There were various forms of pollutions caused by the operations of the company. These included water pollution which affected the streams, ponds, wells and rivers; air-pollution affected the crops, leaves and animals around (flora and fauna). 32 This affected the general agricultural outputs of the community at different times. But the company would not pay any compensation to the community for the purpose of alleviating the sufferings encountered by the community due to the volume of pollutions unleashed by the companies mining activities. 33 Asked why the community failed to act against these lapses or insist on the company fulfilling the terms of the agreement, Mr. Daniel Osi revealed that some elites of the community who ought to enforce compliance on the part of the company sabourtaged the community. They benefitted a lot from the company through special favours, grants and contract award among others. 34 continuing he said; You cannot eat your cake and still have it. After fraternizing with the company management, benefiting from them, it was practically impossible for the same people to turn round to accuse the company leadership of non-performance. So, the community with large number of illiterate and poverty ridden population had to live at the mercy of the company throughout the duration of the company's stay and operation in the area. 35

CONCLUSION
Mining operations of Crush Stones Industries Ltd in Eluogwu in Amata village Ishagu, lasted for over ten years 1993 -2009. Its operations were peaceful; it worked under terms contained in the lease agreements between the Amata village community (Leaser) and the company (leases). It made use of modern mining equipments that facilitated its operations and huge outputs. The quality of its products as well as availability of network of roads attracted large number of customers to the company. It made use of skilled and semi-skilled workers from within and outside Ishiagu community.
Unfortunately the progress made in this site was one sided. While the company benefited substantially in the mining operations, the community almost practically lost out. In what appeared to be collusion between the company and some community leaders, the entire community failed to benefit much, leaving the so called community elites to short -change the community. Thus, most of the obligations the company owed the community remained farcical and unfulfilled throughout the period it operated there. This simply meant that while the company was the beneficiary, the community remained to extent the loser.