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Frontline Edo State based NGO, the Okpamakhin Community Initiative, (OCI), and a nationwide Coalition Against Landgrabbing and Deforestation (CALD), have called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, with other vested institutions of the country, to immediately investigate the N69 billion Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) oil palm plantation establishment fund and others, once granted to the Edo State government, as engineered by Edo State governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki and his namesake, Mr. Godwin imefiele, CBN’s ex-governor, who is currently standing court trial and incarcerated over alleged financial fraud.
The call was made by a civil society hardliner and umbrella symbol of OCI and convener of CALD, Comrade Tony Erha, and Chief Reuben Aizenabor, Edo community liaison director of the two bodies. The bodies had been at loggerhead with the Obaseki-led state government and some companies, on allegations of environmental violation, land-grabbing and livelihood destruction of hundreds of poor agrarian communities of the state cutting across twelve of its eighteen local government areas (LGAs).
The groups accused Obaseki of shortchanging the local growers of the oil palm trees, who were intended recipients of the CBN fund and others, in preference of the multinational firms, who beneficiary indigenous companies were alleged to have been fronting for.
In a press statement, signed by the duo, Governor Obaseki was also cautioned to immediately stop his moves to cede another 47,000 hectares of aboriginal forest reserved lands, belonging to poor agrarian Edo villages, to ‘his business friends and multinational companies, for more establishment of single-crop plantations and hidden mining in the state”..
Governor Obaseki was further blamed for “similarly grabbing over 75,000 hectares of the higher biodiversity and arable lands from the adjoining Owan, Ehor and Iuleha-Ora-Ozalla forest reserves, respectively. through “a stage-managed N69 billion Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) funding, fast-tracked by Governor Obaseki and his namesake, Godwin Imefiele,the CBN’s ex-governor, who is currently incarcerated over alleged financial frauds”
The statement also lambasted the outgoing governor and his government over what it called ‘heinous crime they committed against the poor of the poor people and peasants of Edo, by giving back to an Okomu company, a vast 13,750,000 hectares of high rainforest reserved land areas, which were earlier grabbed by the same company, but revoked and reverted to the local community, the original owners.
The press release praised the immediate-past government of Adams Oshiomhole, under Prince Clem Agba, former Environment commissioner, for revoking the vast land areas.
The statement further accused the governor of double standard, in the revocation and its flouting, as a vital part of the Executive Council of the government of ex-Governor Adams Oshiomhole, who justly revoked the land, was the same who, as a governor gave the same land back to its violator..
The groups allegedly asserted that Governor Obaseki’s frivolous grabbing of the land, had greatly impacted against the aboriginal rich forest biodiversity, its rural livelihood, the environment and natural resource-base.
“Our hapless Edo villages had not experienced the devastation the governor had brought upon us, by the bulldozing farmlands and arable crops of our people, to give way to mono-crop plantations. “The Obaseki’s onslaught in his elapsing eight years on the saddle, had occasioned acute uncertainty and scarcity of staple farm produce in the state. Yet, the governor attributes Edo food scarcity to insecurity, incessant herdsmen and bandits’ attacks”
The renewed call on President Tinubu and other institutions to probe the agricultural activities of the governor, may have invoked the longstanding titanic battle about the contending issues, which resumed in 2014, between Edo local communities and civil society groups on one hand and Edo State government and plantation companies, on the other hands. It had resulted to some court cases, in which governor Obaseki was accused of flouting court’s rulings.
Okpamakhin Community Initiative, with farmers and land-users from hundreds of Edo communities, had also taken the state government to the Economic Communities of West Africa (ECOWAS) Regional Courts, in Abuja, where the Federal Government, had stood in as a principal accuser for the state.
“Governor Obaseki had rendered our agrarian communities degraded, dispossessed and sent into perpetual slavery. Our farm crops had been bulldozed to replace those single-crop plantations, making us to abandon our villages for non-Edo indigenes to take over. Now, our once robust villages, are going extinct”.
The statement referred to the latest statement by the state government, in which it had declared to news men that it was acquiring more 70,000 hectares for oil palm plantation.
“We are appalled that Governor Obaseki premised the forceful takeover of our livelihood and land heritage, on contestable notions and social distortion like the Roundtable on Sustainable palm Oil (RSPO), a debatable certification, with its self-suiting. We are also taken aback as the governor had always given out the key employment positions of the plantations and the much-talked-about, but unimplemented Edo Forestry Commission, to Ghanaians and other nationalities, whereas there are Edo more fit for the jobs”.
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