Tony Ehra
It is not the best of times for the Edo State Government (EDSG), currently led by Mr. Godwin Obaseki and most of the local communities who garnered their votes to elect him for a two straight tenures of eight years. Having spent barely over a year in his second tenure of four years each, the governor, as now alleged by the various local communities of Edo, have bared his fangs by ceding out to powerful companies and individuals ancestral farmlands and forest reserves, belonging to the locals, as had not been done by many governors before him, thus leading the poor people and their communities into acute dispossession and hopelessness.
Whilst some hapless Edo local communities like Urhonigbe, Iviukue, Odighi, Ekiadolor, Odiguetue, Uhiere and others recently took their grievances in wild street protests to Benin City, over purported undue ceding of their land by the state government, deadly crisis is brewing in the vast community of Okpamakhin, spreading across the threesome forest reserves of Ehor, Owan and Iuleha/Ora/Ozalla, altogether called Owan forest zone.
As vexatious and inflammable the matter had become, the various communities, who are diligently mobilizing indigenes of the community, users of the land and the general public, have vowed to Our Reporters that they would deploy every legal means to resist and retrieve their land inheritance from the alleged grabbing.
Alas, like ‘fire and brimstones’, the over 35 villages of the rain forest-bearing Okpamakhin, spreading across the three local government areas (LGAs) of Uhunmwode, Ovia North East and Owan West, to some other contiguous LGAs, are at titanic tug-of-war with Governor Obaseki for ceding their ancestral farmlands and forest reserves (as alleged by the various communities) without their prior information and consent, to influential private companies and individuals, for plantation erections and other agro-allied business ventures.
The Okpamakhin communities include Orhua, Oke-Irhue, Umokpe, Ekpan, Agudezi (for Uhunmwode LGA); Ozalla, Igbira Camp, Uhunmora, Oke-Ora, Sabongida-Ora, Eme-Ora, Ugbeturu, Atoruru, Ugbebezi, Agoshodin, Obi Camp, Etiose, Ewei, Uzebba, Ukpuje, Avbiosi, Sobe and others (for Owan West); Owan, Agbanikaka, Uhiere, Odiguetue, Odighi etc. Okpamakhin is a derived name from ‘Okpame’, a Bini prince, who inhabited and enhanced the area while on exile from the kingdom and thereafter, when he reigned as Oba Ozolua, from 1483 to 1514. He influenced the communities to regenerate the entire forest land, with important economic and medicinal trees including ogbolo, rubber and oil palm trees etc.
Earlier in December, 2019, unknown to Okpamakhin, trouble resumed for the entire community when Governor Obaseki floated a jointly N69 billion loan scheme and ceded the remaining community’s land from the poor locals to please the rich and the mighty. Earlier on, the governor allegedly assisted Okomu Oil Palm Company Plc (OkomuOil) to grab about 14,000 hectares from the same ancestral Owan forest zone, most part of which the previous state government, in which he served as Economic Adviser, had revoked.
But, behind the scene, part of the alleged grabbed-land is said to be earmarked for the now disputable cattle grazing land. His namesake, Godwin Emefiele, governor of the Centre Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Obaseki told the newsmen that Edo and the apex bank was providing the fund for some companies and local growers of the tree, on the codename of Edo State Oil Palm Programme (ESOPP). Obaseki further hinted that his administration had provided 120,000 hectares of land, including vast forest cover for the plantations, which would finally cost N200 billion.
During the project’s inaugural event organised by the state government, CBN and Plantation Owners Association (POFON), Obaseki’s Special Adviser on Media and Communication, Crusoe Osagie, named some of the companies that would access the funds as Dangote Dansa Farms, Bruk Plantation Edo Limited, Saro Africa, FDGB Group of Malaysia, Ella Lakes Plc, De United Foods Industries (Dufil), Platform Capital, WACOT Limited, TGI Group, A & Hatman Ltd, Saturns Farms (Nosak Group), Agro Allied Business (FMN), Farmforte Agro Allied Solutions and Masini Limited.
At the event held in Benin City, the state capital, medium and small scale growers, like the local farmers, who were also to be receivers of the fund, were allegedly denied entry, leaving the big businesses and influential persons to commandeer the humongous fund.
Speculations of the eventual undue allocation of the remaining vast forest land allegedly wrested by OkomuOil, came into the light when Fayus Nigeria Ltd and some other beneficiaries of the last allocations visited Orhua, Ozalla, Sabongida-Ora, Uzebba and the rest communities claiming to have acquired the land from government. Several meetings were held in Government House, Benin, where invited representatives of the communities were lured into giving out the land through financial inducements and subtle threats. Whilst most of the communities turned down the overtures, they were threatened with police arrests. Further visits were paid to the communities, with large retinues of heavily armed soldiers and policemen where the communities rebuffed them, especially when the investors and government’s officers maintained that government is the owner and last authority on the land. The communities themselves asserted that they own the land and that government only acts as a trust that is responsible to the communities. A town hall meeting organized by government for Sabongida-Ora between the communities, government and the investors was stalemated.
Although the communities insisted on not relinquishing their lands, government still insists on having it whilst continuing with its survey and evaluation of the existing farm crops, upon which it says the investors would pay compensation. About two weeks ago, the Ozalla and Sobe communities, on their axis of the forest had resisted the mapping and enumerating of crops on the land in the same manner Uzebba and others stopped the removal of immature crops to give way to the investor’s bulldozers.
When such exercise was about been carried out at Ozalla, aggrieved youth halted the planned bulldozing of their crops on the land. Fayus Company Ltd had another plan, even though it promised the youth of Ozalla not to destroy the crops and would abstain from that axis hence it was a farmland with crops.
A day after the visit to Ozalla community, where the promise was made a pre-scoping workshop on Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) acquisition on the land was carried out in Benin City by Fayus, without due invitation to Ozalla and the other communities, who ideally are the first stakeholders in the EIA process. Fayus thereby revealed that it acquired 5,082 hectares of the land within the same Ozalla and Ora forest reserve. Arguments ensued between the community’s representatives and the organizers.
“Amongst the individual communities of Okpamakhin, we have been holding many meetings in our efforts to mobilize our people. We must overcome this affliction of the grabbing of our land, which could ruin our people and make our community go into extinct, if the land, the livewire of our community is ceased from us”. Said, Chief Aizenabor of the Ozalla Traditional Council and a foundational member of the Okpamakhin Community Initiative, an organization that represents the enlarge community. Also speaking at the occasion of the recent meeting held at the Palace of Onotare, the traditional stool of Ozalla clan, asserted that allowing the investors to possess the land would lead the people into perpetual slavery, as lots of youth of the community, who presently depend on the land, would have nowhere to go than turn to crime.
At the Arelu Palace Hall, Sabongida-Ora, series of meetings had been held at the instance of the Odion (leadership by the most senior man) of the town, several of its traditional heads and Mr. James Alufokhai, Secretary of the Ora Traditional Council urged all to use non-violence means to stop the land grab. A crowded meeting also held at the Uzebba palace of the Utebi of Aoma, where the Head of the Iuleha Traditional Council of Chiefs, commented.
According to him, “the Uzebba clan has no sufficient land to farm and not the one to cede to investors. My people have no inch of land to give anybody”. Like the other community heads, he also asserted that there is no chief of the forest community, who in the right frame of mind that would join government to give out the land for upward of 99 years, thereby dousing the rumour that some unguarded indigenes of the clan were assisting government to wrest the land.
Tony Ehra is a seasoned journalist and a conservationist