In The 1980s, Italy Paid A Nigerian Town $100 A Month To Store Toxic Waste

https://www.google.com.ng/amp/s/timeline.com/amp/p/159a6487b5aa

In the 1980s, Italy paid a Nigerian town $100 a month to store toxic waste—and it’s happening again
Toxic colonialism at its worst - Stephanie Buck

In the mid 1980s, Italy could only process 20 percent of the toxic waste it generated. The rest it quietly sent abroad. Why not, when you could pay a poor African community to store your dangerous chemicals?
The small fishing village of Koko, Nigeria, made international headlines in 1988 when it was discovered that two Italian firms had arranged for the storage of 18,000 drums of hazardous waste with Koko residents. The containers were disguised as building materials and offloaded into a local man’s vacant yard for $100 per month.

By the time Nigerian authorities identified the scheme, the drums were leaking and people were getting sick.
Nigerian students in Italy learned about the waste dump in Koko and alerted the media. In May 1988, The Daily Times, a government-run Nigerian newspaper, traveled to the tiny port town to investigate. There, in a vacant residential lot, reporters found “over 2,000 drums, sacks, and containers,” some of which were “identified with the letter R (the international symbol indicating ‘toxic and harmful industrial waste’). Many have already burst and are emitting a very offensive odor in the area.”

The lot’s owner, Sunday Nana, confirmed that he had agreed to let foreign importers use his land. He had initially asked for $200 per month, but negotiations settled at $100. Four shipments had arrived since the previous year, and more were coming.

The Nigerian government was shocked. Immediately, it ordered an Italian ship docked in Lagos to be seized and detained. Italian authorities responded by insisting the chemicals deposited at Koko were not harmful but merely coal tars, paint waste, and industrial solvents. But an independent analysis of the material by a British environmental group determined that 28 percent of the waste contained polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB), a combustible that could produce a highly toxic compound called dioxin.