Oil palm plantation establishment fund: OCI, CALD call for investigation


    Harvested oil palm fruits

The Okpamakhin Community Initiative, (OCI), and the Coalition Against Landgrabbing and Deforestation (CALD), have called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to investigate the N69 billion Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) oil palm plantation establishment fund granted the Edo State government.

Making the call through an e-release, Comrade Tony Erha of the OCI and Chief Reuben Aizenabor of CALD called on the president and other crime fighting  institutions in the country to beam attention on Governor Godwin Obaseki and Mr. Godwin Emefiele, ex CBN Governor, standing trial on financial fraud charges.

Chief Reuben Aizenabor of CALD said the civil society and community group were using the release to accuse the state government and some companies 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 duo through the release, accused Mr. Obaseki of shortchanging the local growers of the oil palm trees, whom they claimed to be the intended recipients of the CBN fund and others, instead of the multinational firms whom beneficiary indigenous companies were alleged to have been fronting for.

The duo appealed to the governor to stop his moves to cede another 47,000 hectares of aboriginal forest reserved lands, belonging to poor agrarian Edo villages to "multinational companies, for more establishment of single crop plantations and hidden mining in the state."

The group alleged that in similar vein, there was already a land "grabbing of 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  N69 billion Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) funding."

They frowned at the action of the Edo State government for giving back to Okomu oil company 13,750,000 hectares of high rainforest reserved land areas earlier revoked and handed over to the local community, the original owners, by former Governor, Adams Oshiomhole. 
 
Reuben Aizenabor of CALD, alleged, “Governor Obaseki has rendered our agrarian communities degraded, dispossessed and sent into perpetual slavery. Our farm crops have 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."

He said this stand became expedient based on the declaration by the state government that it was  acquiring more 70,000 hectares for oil palm plantation. 

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