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Coal workers at Ekulu coal mine, present-day Enugu State, 1959.

Coal generated lots of revenue for Nigeria between the years 1916 and 1970 when it was one of the country's major revenue earners.
In the southeastern part of the country, exploration of the mineral began in present-day Enugu State in 1909, with production at the mines in Onyeama, Ogbete, Iva Valley, and Okpara climbing from 25, 511 tons in 1916 to an estimated 583,422 tons before a decline set in during the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970).
At the end of the war, most parts of the South-East had been ravaged and many mining experts, mostly from Britain and Poland had left Nigeria.
The exit of experts coupled with the discovery of a commercial quantity of crude oil which made the government abandon coal, resulted in the neglect and subsequent abandonment of the massive infrastructure at the mines managed by the Nigerian Coal Corporation (NCC).
The NCC tried to manage operations unsuccessfully for another 30 years but the game was up. It finally folded up in 2002. The former miners were not laid off, neither was their employment terminated. The only legacy of mining they have is the Colliery Quarters near Iva Valley that they live. 
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